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THE WAY, THE TRUTH, 
AND THE LIFE. 



LECTURES TO EDUCATED HINDUS, 



DELIVERED ON HIS LATE VISIT TO INDIA, 



REV. JULIUS H.'SEELYE, 

Professor in Amherst College. 



:^ . J 



BOSTON: 

CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 

Congregational House, 

beacon street. 

1873. 



n^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

The Congregational Publication Society, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



C. J. peters & SON, 

STEREOTYPERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, 

5 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. 



INTEODUCTORY NOTE. 



These lectures are a part of those given before 
educated Hindus, by Prof. Seelye, on his recent visit 
to India. The four here published were written 
out, and issued from the press in Bombay, at the 
earnest request of native gentlemen, one of whom, 
an eminent Brahmin scholar, offered to bear the 
expense of publication. It was a matter of regret 
that the author's brief stay, and the multiplicity of 
his engagements, — lecturing, holding personal con- 
ferences with inquirers, answering letters received 
from others, — allowed him time to write out only 
these ; but they will suffice to show the spirit and 
general character of all. 

The interest with which they were received, the 
large and constantly-increasing audiences of the 
higher classes, — educated Brahmins, Parsees, and 
others, — that listened to them, were not more a 
tribute to the lecturer than an illustration of the 
power of the truths he presented over their minds 



4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

and hearts. The interest was eminently suggestive in 
its relations to the future religious history of India, 
and was quite beyond the hopes of those who had en- 
couraged the enterprise. The attempt to reach a class 
hitherto almost wholly neglected, with all their native 
prejudices against the gospel only intensified by a 
high intellectual training from which all proper 
Christian influence had for the most part been rigidly 
excluded, was indeed an experiment, but one that, 
whatever might be the issue, was eminently fit to be 
made, — one worthy the Christian scholar and philan- 
thropist, and one which a missionary body like the 
American Board might well encourage. The manner 
of Prof. Seelye's visit was especially favorable, — - in 
no formal connection with any missionary organiza- 
tion, the Christian gentleman travelling at his own 
charges, delajdng a few weeks only in the course of 
his journey before returning to his professional labors, 
and stajdng longer than his personal convenience 
permitted, because he could not refuse the earnest re- 
quests to continue his lectures as long as possible, — 
he had a rare vantage-ground, which he knew how to 
turn to good account. Yet the secret of his success 
lay yet more in the fundamental truths of the gospel 
which he pressed with so much clearness and force 
upon the moral nature of his hearers, commending 
himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 



IKTEODUCTORY NOTE. 6 

The attention given these lectures at Bombay and 
Poona, is a striking illustration of the oneness of the 
moral sentiment amid the most diverse races of men. 

They are reprinted, and given to the American 
public, not simply to gratify a worthy curiosity on 
the part of many who have felt an interest in the 
success of Prof. Seelye's efforts, but as an earnest 
presentation of first principles in morals and religion 
that will be welcomed by thoughtful men, especially 
by students in our literary institutions. 

Prof. Seelye found in circulation among English 
readers in India, a printed lecture of his on miracles, 
originally given as a part of a course * by different 
gentlemen in Boston. It has been thought wise to 
publish it with the others, that the volume may find 
a larger audience, and, it is to be hoped, to make 
his visit yet more effective for good. The subject- 
matter of the lecture thus added, and the discussion 
it receives, render it3 appearance here especially 
appropriate. 

' N. G. Clakk. 

Congregational House,] 

Boston, Aug, 14, 1873. > 

* Boston Lectures, 1870. 



PREFACE TO THE BOMBAY EDITION. 



During the present season, Prof. Seelye, visiting 
Bombay on a journey around the world, was invited 
to remain, and give some religious addresses to the 
educated natives. He was heard attentively by large 
and intelligent audiences, among whom a strong 
desire was expressed that the addresses might be 
published. They had not, however, been previously 
written ; but Prof. Seelye was induced to prepare, 
according to his recollection, the first four, which 
are herewith presented, in the hope that they may 
further the object for which they were given. 

GEO. BOWEN. 
Bombay, February, 1873. 



THE DESIEABLE END OF PEOGEESS. 



Gentlemen, — All tlie chief nations of the 
world just now seem passing through a period 
of extraordinary changes. In my own land, we 
have lately experienced the most momentous 
movement since our history began. You are 
perhaps familiar with its outlines. A struggle 
of opinion respecting human slavery grew into 
a conflict of arms, terribly vast, which has ended 
both in the overthrow of slavery and in its per- 
petual prohibition. Passing westward, we find 
unprecedented changes taking place in Japan. 
It is scarcely ten years since the first Japanese 
student came, for an education, to the United 
States ; but such was the opposition then to any 
intercourse with the outside world, that* he was 
obliged to leave his country by stealth, and 
would have lost his head had he been discovered. 
Japan was then a feudal State, without a code 
of laws, having an arbitrary despot at its head, 



10 LECTUEE I. 

and a host of petty princes owing him subjection, 
but wielding also a tyrannical power over their 
own territories and retainers. Within ten years 
this has all been changed. Japan has now a 
constitutional monarch, with an official cabinet 
and parliament; and the feudal princes have 
yielded up their rank, while nine-tenths of their 
former revenue goes to the support of the new 
order of things. Two hundred Japanese stu- 
dents, sent and supported by the government 
itself, are now pursuing their education in the 
United States ; while others also, under the same 
auspices, are in England and the Continental 
States of Europe. China, though holding fast 
her traditional dislike — a mingled hatred and 
contempt — of foreigners and their ways, finds 
it impossible to preserve her isolation ; and the 
Chinese government has the present year sent 
to the United States thirty young men, to pur- 
sue there a course of study for a term of fifteen 
years, and has also decreed that a similar num- 
ber, for a similar course, should follow them 
during each of the next ensuing four years. 
You know the changes, and their vast signifi- 
cance, which have recently occurred, and are 
still transpiring, in European nations; Avhile in 
India it requires no close observer to discover 
underlying tendencies of thought and action 



THE DESIRABLE EKD OF PROGRESS. 11 

indicative of momentous movements among 
yourselves. 

Looking over the whole field, and bringing 
the nations into one view, it would be interest- 
ing to inquire whether all these currents, com- 
prehensively examined, can be seen to set in 
any one direction, which might indicate the 
actual goal of human progress. But there is 
another inquiry, preliminary to that : What is 
the most desirable goal ? What sort of prog- 
ress for mankind will be sought by the wisest 
well-wisher of his race ? 

To this question various answers can be given, 
only one of which can be true. Advancement 
in what may be termed the material arts of 
civilization is sometimes claimed to be the most 
desirable sort of progress. Let man subdue 
nature, it is said. Let there be a great increase 
of railroads and telegraph lines, and useful in- 
ventions of all sorts. Multiply manufactures, 
and increase commerce, and let the means of 
satisfying human wants grow as the wants them- 
selves enlarge : thus you will strengthen men's 
sense of dependence upon each other, wars will 
cease, nations will be bound together in a 
brotherhood of common interest, and, in this ad- 
vancing growth, the highest advance of civiliza- 
tion is to be reached. Thus we often hear. 



12 ' LECTURE I. 

But there are two diflSculties with all this, 
which we may not wisely ignore. The first is, 
that these arts of material progress have no 
power of reproduction. They cannot perpetu- 
ate themselves. There are instances innumera- 
ble where these arts, with no power other than 
their own to sustain them, have been left to die 
and disappear. Where are the arts which built 
the Great Pyramid, apparently the oldest mon- 
ument of human workmanship now existing? 
The Astronomer Royal of Scotland, who has spent 
months in its careful measurements and study, 
aided by the best instruments which London 
and Paris and Vienna could supply, declares 
that the builders of this structure must have 
had instruments exceeding in acQuracy his own. 
You have perhaps seen statements of recent re- 
searches in your neighboring kingdom of Cam- 
bodia, where ruins of extensive dwellings of 
elaborate workmanship appear, built long ago 
by the ancestors of men who now live in the 
tops of trees, to escape from tigers. The exqui- 
site bronzes and lacquer-work made in earlier 
times in Japan, the Japanese cannot now 
equal; while the beautiful colors which the 
Chinese formerly exhibited in their porcelains, 
and the bronzes inlaid with silver which they 
formerly wrought so perfectly, they cannot now 



THE DESIEABLE END OF PROGBESS. 13 

produce. In the ruins of Pliil^ and Karnak 
and ancient Thebes, in Nineveh and Balbec, in 
Yucatan and Mexico, are evidences abundant of 
arts once possessed, but long since lost, because 
their possessors had nothing but the arts them- 
selves with which to preserve them. It is a 
great mistake, based upon a very superficial 
philosophy, and resting on a science falsely so 
called, which supposes that there naturally 
exists in human society an inherent power of 
progress, capable, through its own evolution, 
of perpetual growth. The deepest principles of 
human nature, and all the facts of history, 
declare exactly the reverse. We pride our- 
selves upon our useful arts, upon the triumphs 
of the industry and invention of the present 
time, and there are enough who fancy these to 
be the all-sufficient good; but, if we seek to 
perpetuate these by their own power alone, can 
any one tell why- they should not ultimately dis- 
appear and perish, as has been done in so many 
instances before? We do not avoid the force 
of this by saying, that, if some arts disappear, 
others arise whose sum equals or exceeds in 
value those lost ; for why do they arise ? Out 
of what source does the impulse to all this ad- 
vancement actually spring? Our material wants 
do not give birth to our material progress ; 



14 LECTURE I. 

rather does the progress itself evoke and en- 
large, and first make us conscious of our wants. 
The luxuries of one age have been called the 
necessities of another. It is not the wants of the 
savage — his need of food and shelter — which 
start him on the track of civilization ; for we find 
these wants among vast multitudes of men 
without the faintest gleam of progress. As a 
matter of fact, we always find that it is some 
spiritual impulse which impels men in their ma- 
terial progress ; and, unless this impulse is fur- 
nished and kept alive, neither can arts be pre- 
served, nor, if lost, can they be restored. 

The other difficulty is thus indicated. This 
material advancement can in no respect create 
that spiritual impulse, of which it is altogether 
the creature. The mental progress, of which it 
is the sign and fruit, finds in it no sufficient 
stimulus nor food, and, with nothing else to 
support it, becomes exhausted. Moreover, as 
all experience shows, the union of men in mate- 
rial interest is helpless in securing their true 
or lasting fellowship. The so-called arts of 
peace have, by themselves, no power of averting 
war. The history of the last ten years in Eu- 
rope and America shows that the closest ties of 
blood and common interest offer no restraint to 
people whom other influences set on strife. A 



THE DESIRABLE END OF PEOGRESS. 15 

few years ago it was said in tlie United States 
that no conflict of arms between the North and 
South need be apprehended, because, besides 
our kinship, there were our railroads and tele- 
graphs and postal communications, and the 
myriad interdependences of trade, to bind us 
indissolubly together ; but, when the thoughts 
and sentiments of the two sections became irrec- 
oncilable, all these material bonds were but as 
the seven green withs upon the strong man, 
which he brake with his strength, '^even as a 
thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the 
fire." Bands of steel are fragile as threads of 
gossamer in the presence of ideas, and under 
the power of spiritual principles. The desir- 
able goal of civilization, therefore, cannot bo 
reached by any material progress. 

Shall we seek it, then, in something intellec- 
tual ? Will education furnish us the true good ? 
There are men enough who ask if ignorance be 
not the source of all our trouble, for which 
knowledge is the only and all-sufficient relief 
Educate men therefore ! Open the gateways of 
science, and bid the human race ascend on the 
broad paths of knowledge to its high goal ! Of 
course, nothing need be said against education, 
in itself considered ; only ignorance despises 
knowledge: but, when we set before us for 



16 LECTURE I. 

attainment the true and highest . good for men, 
there are certain difficulties in our way, which 
no amount of knowledge or of culture can 
possibly remove. I will not dwell upon the fact, 
shown by manifold illustrations, that culture has 
no more power to perpetuate itself than has the 
material progress we have just considered. 
History is full of instances where sciences and 
arts and literatures and civilizations have de- 
clined. But, besides this, growth in knowledge, 
or culture of the intellect, cannot be man's 
highest good ; for, since this can only be secured 
in the highest degree by the most exclusive de- 
votion to its pursuit, it must, from the nature of 
the case, be confined to a few, and can never be 
enjoyed by the great mass of mankind. The 
necessities of human life have always required, 
as they must ever do, on the part of most men, 
Vastly other occupations than those which the 
cultivated man must follow, if he pursues his 
culture, while the true good should be one 
which all men might attain. That good, which, 
from its nature, can only be given to a small 
portion of the race, is not wisely to be proposed 
as the most desirable end of human progress. 

But a graver difficulty remains. You will ac- 
knowledge that there is no satisfactory condition 
of human life without virtue, — that a social state 



THE DESIBABLE END OF PBOGRESS. 17 

lacking in integrity and purity could be no 
proper model for imitation, whatever its degree 
of culture or material progress. No good can 
remain untainted in the midst of a prevailing 
moral defilement. ^'No nation," said the great 
historian Niebuhr, '' ever died except by sui- 
cide ; " and the suicidal poison is always engen- 
dered by the nation's moral corruption. Now, 
I affirm, and if you will note closely the facts in 
the case you will not doubt the statement, that 
culture fails in the highest requirement here ; for 
it is powerless to secure virtue, or to interpose 
8.ny efficient obstacle against vice. I might 
prove this from the universal principles of 
human nature ; but this is unnecessary, since it is 
declared, with sut^h startling clearness, by the 
facts of history. Conspicuous examples abound 
of the failure of culture to produce any moral 
improvement of men, or to resist the destructive 
influence of a corrupt society. Take ancient 
Athens. Perhaps no people ever attained so 
refined or exalted a culture as the Athenians 
possessed during the time of Pericles, — a cul- 
ture so wide -reaching that even the common 
people were students of philosophy and accom- 
plished critics of art. In no city, surely, of the 
present day, would an artist think of asking or 
abiding by the judgment of the common people 

2* 



18 LECTUEE L 

upon his productions ; but this was a matter of 
every-day occurrence at Athens. Not only 
smiths, tanners, and cobblers, as Xenophon ex- 
presses it, gathered together to hear the 
discussions of philosophers, but the same classes 
came from their homes and their workshops to 
the market-place, and pronounced their verdict 
upon the highest works of art ever submitted to 
any age ; and their verdict has been respected by 
every age. But all this surprising culture, un- 
paralleled in its perfection, left the soul of the 
people dead. It showed not the slightest power 
to purify. It brought forth no virtue, and 
checked no vice. The evidence of Athenian 
corruption in the most blooming period of Athe- 
nian culture is overwhelming and appalling. A 
strong argument might be constructed to show 
that this enlightened centre of art and philoso- 
phy was the most corrupt city of its time. In 
one of Plato's dialogues, an intimate friend and 
pupil of Socrates extols his master in a eulo- 
gium which has been even called an apotheosis, 
wherein it is put forth, as a matter equally of 
wonder and of admiration, that Socrates alone, 
one single man in all Athens, was not guilty of 
a vice too revolting to be named ! The whole 
atmosphere of Athens was surcharged with a 
moral pestilence, whose ravages were most dire, 



THE DESIRABLE EiTD OF PROGRESS. 19 

even when the results of culture were the most 
splendid. The culture, unable to resist the 
moral corruption, itself yielded and fell before 
it, till the cradle of art and philosophy became 
also its grave. Such a fact — to which your 
own familiarity, gentlemen, with the records of 
history will suggest copious parallels drawn from 
individuals and communities — teaches us, that, 
unless we have some end to attain higher than 
culture, and some instrument more potent than 
culture to employ, all our hopes of human prog- 
ress and of the highest civilization are in vain. 

Shall we seek, then, this higher end and more 
potent instrument in virtue itself ? Granted that 
no result would be satisfactory in which moral 
purity does not reign, shall we endeavor to 
secure this purity by instructing men in its pre- 
cepts? Alas, gentlemen, if you closely judge, 
either from human nature or from history, you 
will predict the inevitable failure of all such at- 
tempts. Instruction in moral precepts gives no 
inspiration to virtue, as facts abundantly show. 
We are liable to a great mistake here, — a mistake 
actually made by many men, who, from a false 
theory of human nature, draw conclusions which 
all the facts of human conduct deny. It is 
judged, that, because men ought to act virtu- 
ously, they would do so if they could only see 



20 LECTUEE I. 

this duty with unmistakable clearness ; but the 
simple fact is, that they do see it, and have always 
seen it. No man needs to be told that he ought 
to do right : he knows it without any telling ; 
and oh, how feeble are all the instructions of 
another, in* comparison with the strength and the 
majesty of that undying voice, which, in every 
man's soul, has been proclaiming his duty ever 
since he had a soul ! The great trouble is, that 
men will not do their duty when it is known ; 
and how shall any increasing instruction reach 
or remedy this ? 

Socrates furnishes a conspicuous example of 
the failure of this method. Of all the world's 
great ethical teachers, no one seems to have had 
as complete a conviction as he, that instruction 
in virtue is sufficient to secure virtue. Virtue 
is teachable, was his famous motto, on the basis 
of which he went about for thirty years, 
through the streets and workshops of Athens, 
illustrating and expounding his favorite theme, 
seeking ever to make men virtuous by instruct- 
ing them in the precepts of virtue. Does any 
one doubt the matchless skill with which this 
great master inculcated his lessons ? Is any one 
likely to exaggerate the prodigious intellectual 
results of his teaching? These abide still, and 
are certain to far outlast our time ; but we have 



THE DESIEABLE END OF PROGRESS. 21 

no evidence of the slightest moral improvement 
resultino; from all the efforts of Socrates. Alci- 
blades, one of his most intimate and attentive 
pupils and friends, upon whom Socrates exerted 
all his power of reformation, remained a licen- 
tious and hopeless profligate; and it does not 
appear, that, in any instance, this master of spir- 
itual births, as he termed himself, was able to 
bring forth one virtuous impulse to a virtuous 
life. In all this, Socrates only illustrates the uni- 
versal law. No preaching of morality, unat- 
tended by any other influence, has ever sunk 
deep into society, or spread widely in the 
thoughts and actions of men. It has never 
shown any power to mould society internally 
and from the centre. It is a very narrow read- 
ing of history, and a very shallow acquaintance 
with the heart, which has not yet taught us that 
something other than knowledge is necessary in 
order to virtue, that something more than light 
is needed in order to life. 

But if instruction in virtue were all-sufficient 
to secure virtuous conduct, yet if we look more 
profoundly into such conduct, good and desir- 
able as it is, we shall not find it the highest 
object of a wise man's desire. For this concep- 
tion of virtue never rises higher than the thought 
of dutv — the thought of something which 



22 LECTUEE I. 

ought to be, done. It commands, it prohibits^ 
and we fulfil its mandates when we do what it 
bids us do. But there is a great difference be- 
tween doing righteously and being righteous, — 
between obedience to a law and the inspiration 
of a life. The constraint of moral precept can, 
at the best, only mould our deeds: it cannot 
shape our inclinations, nor furnish any inner and 
living spring to moral action. You may teach 
a blind man how to direct his steps, and by 
some leading string he may follow your direc- 
tions perfectly ; but oh, how much better when 
he has his own eye, and walks in the light of 
his own clear seeing! You may make a marble 
statue, faultless in its beauty ; but how much 
better that breathing creation which God has 
made, which is instinct with life, and which 
moves as its free spirit guides it! And thus, 
however perfectly you may regulate your con- 
duct by the constraint of duty, it is a far higher 
and nobler life, when your spirit needs no exter- 
nal constraint to control it, but chooses truth 
and righteousness in the exercise of its perfect 
liberty and because of its perfect love. A foun- 
tain of purity opened in the depth and centre 
of the soul, and fed exhaustlessly with the spon- 
taneous impulse of life, every one who intelli- 
gently seeks, either his own good or the highest 



THE DESIRABLE END OF PROGBESS. 23 

welfare of society, will surely desire ; but this 
perfect life is inconceivable, apart from a divine 
quickening, and demands a religious source alike 
to evoke and sustain it. Religion has, therefore, 
in all time and by the great majority of men, 
been felt to be indispensable to the highest 
good. No material prosperity, nor culture, nor 
virtue, however extended, refined, or sure, can 
adequately bless men. 

There are two kinds of religion, and only two. 
The one begins with man, and seeks, by human 
endeavors, after a divine fellowship. It has 
various forms, — Paganism in all its branches, 
Mohammedanism, besides various representatives 
in nominal Christian lands ; but the one charac- 
teristic in which they are all united is that they 
seek after God in some way which the human in- 
tellect has been able to devise, and by some prac- 
tices which the human will is able to perform. 
The God whom they seek may be called the 
Absolute, or Infinite, or Allah, or Buddha, or 
Brahm ; he may be dimly apprehended, or 
worshipped as altogether unknown ; he may 
dwell in some high heavens above us, or, as we 
are sometimes told, in some deep heavens with- 
in ; but whatsoever he may be called, or what- 
soever he may be, the human soul, perhaps by 
penance, perhaps by prayer, perhaps by calm 



24 LECTUEE I. 

and rapt contemplation, seeks if haply it might 
feel after and find him. In this point Paganism 
and Pantheism, the rudest systems of untutored 
thought and the refined speculations of acute 
and cultured minds, meet and agree. The spec- 
tacle which these religions furnish is certainly 
most impressive. Whatever w.e may say of the 
forms in which the religious sentiment has been 
exhibited, no one can smile, none can sneer, at 
the sentiment itself 

But what have all these efforts of man to find 
some religion accomplished ? Taking them all 
together, they have never furnished any death- 
less impulse to society nor any undying inspira- 
tion to the soul : they have made men sometimes 
calm with a stoical indifference, and sometimes 
mute with a hopeless despair ; but they have 
never checked nor changed the tendency of the 
evil they were designed to destroy, while the 
mysterious instinct, the importunate craving, out 
of which the religion has its birth, the religion 
itself is equally unable to stifle or to satisfy. 

I said there are two kinds of religion, and 
only two. The one begins with man, and seeks, 
by human endeavors, after God ; the other be- 
gins with God, and, by a way wholly dirine, 
seeks after man. In this is the peculiarity of 
the Christian, in distinction from all other sys- 



THE DESIEABLE END OF PBOGRESS. 25 

terns of religion ; and, in the revelation of this 
doctrine, is the distinction of the Bible from all 
other books. 

I remember, in one of the Hymns of the Rig 
Veda, a single expression like this: ''He is 
merciful even to him that committeth sin." 
There is some uncertainty about the proper 
interpretation of the passage ; but, granting that 
here is a thought which sounds like the charac- 
teristic doctrine of the Christian Scriptures, I 
know of nothing similar to it, elsewhere, in 
the records of the unchristian world. While the 
thought of God's justice is universal, and the 
idea of propitiation is everywhere found, only 
in the Bible is the divine justice radiant with 
love, and the sacrifice, on whose meritorious 
ground rests the forgiveness of sins, represent- 
ed as altogether the work of God himself 
But this doctrine, which the Christian system 
was the first to declare, reigns through every 
portion of that system. The salvation which 
the Christian religion announces is procured 
wholly through a divine work, and is offered 
to man, not in the least because his obedience 
or service can merit it, but solely through the 
free exercise of divine mercy. It comes to 
men, first of all, in their disobedience, when 
ruined by sin, and offers them forgiveness and 



26 LECTUEE I. 

life as a free gift. The Christian Scriptures 
expressly declare that ''God commendeth his 
love to us, in that while we were yet sinners 
Christ died for us ; " that Christ came "to seek 
and to save that which was lost; " and that, " not 
by works of righteousness which we have done, 
, but by his mercy he saved us." 

Notice now the living inspiration which this 
truth gives to men. God's love to man, thus 
revealed, begets man's love to God; for " we love 
him because he first loved us; " and man's love 
to God kindles man's love to man, "for he that 
loveth God will love his brother also." This 
living germ is capable of evolving the perfect 
life for the individual, and the perfect social 
state. All the requirements of individual per- 
fection are met in that soul where every duty 
and every moral precept are revealed as the 
righteous will of a loving Lord, in whose love 
the soul finds its life, and in whose service it 
rejoices in the liberty of the perfect love which 
casteth out fear. The perfect social state surely 
exists when society, kindled by this divine in- 
spiration, becomes knit together by that charity 
which seeketh not her own, and where the new 
life of love and purity in individual hearts works 
everywhere in peace and good- will. These bless- 
ings, which no other religion even proposes, 



THE DESIBABLE END OF PROGRESS^ 27 

and which surpass the ideal dreams of poetry or 
philosophy, it is not only the actual aim of 
Christianity to secure, but these are the actual 
results of this religion, in exactly the degree in 
which men have yielded to its sway. If it could 
only be everywhere accepted, if all men were 
true and loyal disciples of Jesus Christ, wars 
would cease, oppression and slavery would be 
no more, vice and crime of every sort would 
disappear; there would be purity and love uni- 
versal among men, and the spiritual life which 
the Christian faith enkindles would furnish the 
unfailing impulse to all intellectual growth and 
all industrial activity. Not only righteousness, 
but knowledge, should then flow through all the 
earth, while the wilderness and the solitary place 
should be glad thereof, and the desert should 
rejoice and blossom as the rose. The wise man, 
therefore, who loves his race, will be content 
with nothing less than the effort to bring all 
nations and every heart under the living sway 
of Jesus Christ and his word. 



11. 



THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION WORTHY OF EXAM- 
INATION. 



Gentlemen, — It is related in the New Testa- 
ment that- Philip, one of the earliest disciples 
of Christ, went to a friend, Nathanael by name, 
and said, '^ We have found him of whom Moses 
in the Law, and the Prophets, did write, Jesus 
of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Now, both the 
Law and the Prophets had foretold that the 
Messiah who was to come should descend from 
David, and be born at Bethlehem. Nathan- 
ael perfectly understood this, and therefore put 
no faith in Philip's statement. With no attempt 
to explain its seeming discrepancy from all he 
had been taught to believe, with no inquiry 
whether Jesus of Nazareth might not have been 
born at Bethlehem, and the reputed son of 
Joseph be of the real lineage of David, he em- 
bodies his sceptical objections in the scornful 
reply, '' Can there any good thing come out of 

28 



LECTTJEE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 29 

Nazareth?" Philip makes no reply to the ob- 
jection by way of formal argument, but simply 
invites Nathanael to come and see for himself. 
His words, in substance, ay ere. This is all true 
which I tell you. Jesus of Nazareth, the son 
of Joseph, is the Messiah ; and, if you will but 
come and see him as I have done, and know 
him as I do, your doubts will disappear, and 
your faith will be as firm as mine. Nathanael 
consents. He goes. He finds Jesus. He hears 
his words. He becomes acquainted with his 
character. His examination satisfies him, and he 
believes. ''Rabbi," he exclaims, ''thou art the 
Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." 

I refer to this incident, because it illustrates 
two facts often found. When the claims of the 
Christian religion are presented, they may seem 
to contradict some preconceived opinion, and 
are therefore scornfully set aside. One who has 
tested these claims himself, however, and knows 
their power, will not hesitate to challenge any 
objector to come and see for himself Christian- 
ity has nothing to conceal from friend or foe. 

It is not only open for the examination of the 
world, but it challenges the closest scrutiny, 
and is not afraid of the result. Try me, it says 
to all the opposing thoughts and systems of 
men. Examine my claims in whatever aspect 

3* 



30 LECTITRE n. — THE CHRISTIAJ!^ RELIGION 

and by whatever test you please ; the highest 
flights of human thought, the profoundest re- 
search, and the widest range of inquiry, shall 
find me higher, broader, and deeper than they 
have reached. 

This claim of the Christian religion for exam- 
ination is supported by considerations so numer- 
ous and weighty, that I beg to press it upon 
your attention. It is not my present purpose to 
enter upon any formal presentation of the evi- 
dences of Christianity, but only to refer you to 
some of the more obvious and most indisputable 
grounds upon which this religion claims the 
thoughtful scrutiny of the world. 

1. The Christian religion is a fact in the 
world, and must have originated in some way. 
And now there is the clearest certainty that it 
was first known among men a little more than 
eighteen hundred years ago, and that its author 
was an individual who bore the name of Jesus. 
This certainty has been established after so 
searching a scrutiny, and in the face of so strong 
an opposition, that it may be regarded as a fact 
undisputed and indisputable. But more than 
this is true. The general points in the narrative 
of the New Testament are now past contradic- 
tion. One would not add to his reputation for 
intelligence who should doubt or deny that Soc- 



WORTHY OF EXAMINATIOIT. 31 

rates tauglit men in the streets of Athens, or 
that Plato held his profound discussions in the 
Academy, or that Aristotle walked to and fro 
amid the shady groves of the lyceum discours- 
ing with his disciples. Those persons who are 
anxious to be called independent thinkers would 
be called very independent indeed to dispute 
such points as these. And yet none of these are 
better authenticated than the general facts of 
the gospel history. This history has been sub- 
jected to a criticism of unparalleled rigor and 
learning ; but it has stood the searching ordeal, 
and has come forth from the furnace as gold 
tried in the fire. By far the ablest work which 
the present century has produced against the 
acceptation in which the New Testament is com- 
monly held by Christians, the work which shows 
greater learning, and more philosophical power, 
than almost any other, on that side of the ques- 
tion, — I refer of course to Strauss's ''Life of 
Jesus," — admits that the large basis of historical 
truth in the Gospels can no longer be denied. 
The more brilliant, though far less profound, work 
of Renan, recently attracting an attention which 
it has already lost, re-afl&rms this admission as 
positively as the most confident believer in 
Christianity could desire. There are questions 
still at issue respecting particular points in the 



32 LECTUKE II. — THE CHUISTIAK RELIGION 

gospel narratives, — questions which advancing 
discussion is steadily bringing to an issue more 
and more accordant with the views of Christian 
believers ; ^ but no question any longer exists 
respecting their general truthfulness. We may 
take it, therefore, as a fact no more to be denied, 
that Jesus Christ actually lived and died, in all 
general respects, as the New Testament says he 
did. 

Notice some of these facts. He belonged to 
the humblest rank in society. His reputed 
father was a carpenter. His mother was so 
poor that she could bring to the temple only a 
pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, — 
the gift of the poorest (Lev. xii. 8, Luke ii. 24) 
as her offering after his birth. Till he was 
thirty years of age, Jesus lived with his parents, 
poor, unnoticed, unknown. He had no rich and 
powerful friends, nor any external means of in- 
fluence. No patronage was shown him, no 
earthly master gave him instruction. It is com- 
paratively easy to gain favor and credence for a 
system, where the rich, the learned, the noble 

* The strongest objections to the New Testament have lately been 
urged to its miracles, which are declared to be impossible on scientific 
grounds ; but the recent remarkable mathematical demonstrations, 
which Clausius has applied to the mechanical theory of heat, prove 
not only the entire possibility of miracles, on scientific grounds, but 
their absolute necessity to account for the present condition of things. 



WORTHY OF EXAlVOKATIOlsr. 33 

support it : Christ had none of these on his 
side ; but they were all leagued against him. It 
was no impossible thing for Mohammed to con- 
quer nations with the sword; but Christ com- 
menced his mission, and finished it, preaching 
peace. If his nation had been expecting the 
advent of such a person as he, it would not have 
been difficult to impose upon such expectations ; 
but the Jews were looking for the coming of a 
very different Messiah ; and there was that in the 
appearance of Jesus which made his claims to 
be the Anointed of God the greatest absurdity 
in their eyes: '' Can there any good thing come 
out of Nazareth? " '^ Is not this the carpenter's 
son ? " And yet, with every thing to contend 
with, and nothing to help him but himself, and 
even his own rank and condition all apparently 
against him, this poor, unlettered, and obscure 
individual, at thirty years of age calmly pre- 
sented himself to his nation and to the world as 
their divine Teacher and Saviour and Lord. 
Never before or since has any other man, what- 
ever his power, uttered such pretensions. The 
dreams of insanity do not surpass it ; but the 
dignity and calmness and self-possession of Jesus 
are as unparalleled as his claims. His whole con- 
duct shows that he knew himself, and had the 
clearest consciousness of what he said and did. 



84 LECTUHE n. — THE CHEISTIAN RELIGION 

He always continued poor. He never sought 
wealth, nor applause, nor any other power than 
his own. Without even a place which he could 
call his own, where he could lay his head, de- 
spised and rejected by the ruling classes, finding 
his companions among the destitute and the out- 
casts of society, he spent three years, teaching 
and preaching the kingdom of God. They 
were years of bitter toil and hardship ; but he 
never complained, he never sought his own 
ease, nor excused himself from any work for 
another's good. At the end of three years he 
was put to an ignominious death ; and yet this 
poor, despised, and crucified person has been 
loved and served and worshipped ever since, 
by increasing multitudes, who, somehow or 
other, have come to feel that all their hopes for 
this life and the life to come centre in him. 
The most interesting question, in the most en- 
lightened portion of the world, exerting a wider 
attention and more earnest thought to-day than 
any other theme, relates to the person and work 
of one, who, eighteen hundred years ago, was 
ignominiously put to death as a malefactor. 
How do you account for this ? It is, to say the 
least, the most striking phenomenon in history : 
what is its explanation? Come and see. A 
wise man will not rest till he has solved, if he 
can, such a problem as this. 



WOETHY OF EXAMINATION. 35 

2. Whatever may be said of tlie Christian reli- 
gion, it must certainly be confessed, that, from an 
origin so humble, there have sprung effects in- 
calculably exalted. The crucifixion of Christ 
was an event which both astonished and terrified 
the few, who, during his life, adhered to him. 
All their fondest hopes were destroyed by his 
death. Why were not the disciples themselves 
disheartened and dispersed? Doubtless this is 
what every one beforehand would have pre- 
dicted. The disciples were a little band of rude 
and illiterate men. They were destitute, in all 
respects, of what the world calls power. They 
had no remarkable gifts of reason or of speech. 
They could wield neither the pen, the purse, nor 
the sword. Not only were they the weakest 
instruments, and their means the feeblest, but 
the work of preaching the new religion de- 
manded the strongest agencies in the hands of 
the strongest men. If they were to go forward 
and preach the doctrine of their Master, from 
how many sources might they not expect a most 
bitter opposition! Every government and 
army, every school of learning, the literatures 
and arts of the world, the institutions of society, 
and the deep-seated tendencies of the soul, 
would be all leagued against them. What could 
they do? What did they do? They opened 



86 LECTURE n. — THE CHEISTIAN RELIGION 

tlieir mouths boldly, and ceased not to teach and 
to preach that Jesus is the Christ. They went 
everywhere, declaring that this Jesus, who was 
crucified, is the Lord and Saviour of mankind. 
They were able — these few poor and illiterate 
followers of a despised and crucified Master 
were able — to convince others that their state- 
ments were true. The Roman Empire, the 
mightiest the world has known, made every 
effort to suppress the new faith, but the faith 
grew notwithstanding, till it took possession of 
the very power which had been set for its de- 
struction. How could this be ? The astonishing 
fact demands an explanation. 

In only two other instances do we know the 
history of the propagation of a new system of 
religion; but the problem which the rise and 
spread of Mohammedanism or of Buddhism 
present is very simple in comparison with that 
which belongs to the early extension of Chris- 
tianity. The triumphs of Mohammedanism 
were gained, as you well know, by physical 
force. The ascendency of the Koran, in every 
nation which accepted it, was accomplished by 
the sword. In the case of Buddhism, the aban- 
donment by the great Shakya-Muni of his 
princely rank and inheritance, and his devotion 
to a life of poverty and asceticism, was a most 



WOETHY OF EXAMINA^TION. 37 

impressive spectacle ; and the vigor with which, 
for so many years, he preached his doctrine of 
the vanity of earthly things, could not fail to 
draw around him a multitude of weary and 
wretched souls, to whom relief from the misery 
of a hopeless existence was welcome at any 
price, even that of existence itself But you 
are acquainted with the fact that Buddhism 
gained no strong foothold, and maintained only 
a precarious existence, until, two hundred years 
after the death of its founder, Chandragupta, or 
Sandracottas as he is called in the Western 
world, gave it his patronage, thinking that he 
could thus strengthen his throne against the 
hostile influence of Brahminism ; while it was 
only through tha power of Chandragupta's 
grandson, Asoka, who conquered so large a por- 
tion of India, that Buddhism became a dominant 
religion in this land. You know, too, that when 
this faith spread into the regions where it still 
reigns, it was carried first of all through the 
agencies of political power, and that it gained 
no footing in any land except as it adopted and 
wove into its own system the superstitions al- 
ready existing there. But I need not tell you 
the difference between all this and the early 
spread of the Christian gospel. Christianity 
had no armies, but it conquered armies. It 



88 LECTURE II. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 

started with an obscure individual of mean par- 
entage, in a despised city of a narrow province 
of the Roman Empire, and was without the 
slightest semblance of political power ; but the 
strongest government of the world came to ac- 
knowledge its supremacy. It entered into no 
compromise with other systems of religion ; but 
it simply overthrew them, and took their place 
in the ascendency they had held. It never 
yielded a whit to human passions. It was at war 
with all pride and selfishness and sensuality ; but 
it conquered human hearts, and changed them 
according to its will. The introduction and 
early spread of Christianity are facts without a 
parallel, and can be accounted for by none of 
the ordinary principles which explain the con- 
duct of men. 

But the subsequent history of Christianity is no 
less marvellous. It met and subdued the bar- 
barous hordes who overran Europe and broke up 
the Roman Empire, and, by its simple power, has 
raised them to a height of social prosperity never 
known before. It has entered, with a fresh and 
living inspiration, into all the art and culture 
which have succeeded its introduction. It has 
given life to every genuine reform, and has proved 
itself to be the only agency which has ever shown 
itself able truly to educate and elevate the world. 



WOETHY OF EXAMINATION. 39 

Mucli is said, in our day, about freedom ; but 
tlie world's knowledge and possession of liberty 
are coincident with tlie rise and progress of 
Christ's kingdom. The very idea of liberty was 
wanting to men till it was made clear by the 
Christian doctrine. There was no knowledge of 
freedom in all this Oriental world. Take India 
as an illustration, and find, if you can, in the 
dreams of your poets, or the sayings of your phi- 
losophers, or the doctrines of your religion, any 
more than in the practices of the governments 
which early reigned here, a recognition of the 
thought that man is entitled to freedom. You 
know very well that there was no liberty here ; 
that the only person who was called free was a 
despot, and he was not a free man. The same 
was true elsewhere. We sometimes talk of the 
notion of liberty as held by the ancient Greeks 
and Romans ; but this notion differs radically from 
that which men have since received from the 
Christian doctrine. AH that the Greeks and 
Romans knew of liberty was liberty for a class, — 
liberty for a few, and not for all mankind. The 
Athenian knew that he himself was free, and the 
native Roman citizen knew that he was free born ; 
but that it constituted the true and proper being 
of all men to be free, that man as man is free born, 
this knew neither Plato nor Aristotle, neither 



40 LECTURE n. — THE CHBISTIAN RELIGION 

Cicero nor tlie teacher of Roman law. In the 
great Christian principle that Christ is the Son of 
God, and that he died for man, is contained the 
thought that the individual soul, which has cost 
such a redemption, is of infinite worth, — a 
thought in whose light differences of rank disap- 
pear, and all men, Greek and Barbarian, Jew and 
Gentile, bond and free, are seen to stand on equal 
terms before God. The blessings which men have 
actually received from this doctrine of liberty 
have been in exact proportion to the clearness 
with which the Christian thought which contains 
it has been apprehended. The Christian doctrine 
that salvation is not acquired by our own works, 
and does not depend upon any rank or righteous- 
ness or merit of men, but is wrought out for us 
and within us by Christ's all-perfect work, and is 
received, in God's free grace, through a simple 
faith in what Christ has done, — this doctrine was 
set before the world as the true doctrine of the 
Christian Scriptures, in the great Reformation of 
the sixteenth century, with such a clearness and 
power that it has been followed, in the three 
hundred years succeeding, by a wider extension 
of liberty, and a further increase of political and 
social blessings, among those who have accepted 
the Reformation, than had been attained by all 
the world in all its history before. Nor let any 



WOETHY OF EXAMIKATIOK. 41 

one fancy that this is an accidental connection, or 
one only of time and space ; for every close stu- 
dent will see the causal link which binds these 
facts together. '' The doctrine of Justification by 
Faith," says Sir James Mackintosh, ^4s the basis 
of civil freedom." Hume declares, and no intel- 
ligent person will doubt, that it is to the preach- 
ing of the Puritans, who were a true product 
of the Reformation, that England owes her civil 
liberties. The movement for the destruction 
of the slave-trade and the abolition of slavery 
sprang from the same source. Sir Fowell Buxton, 
who made the first motion in the English Parlia- 
ment for the abolition of slavery in the British 
West Indies, has left on record that his first im- 
pulse to this course was due to the Christian 
preaching in the chapel he was wont to attend. 
The movement, bitterly opposed by selfishness 
and cupidity, was carried to a successful issue by 
those who believed that Christ has died for all 
men, and therefore that all have a right to free- 
dom. It is the same belief, which would not 
yield even in the face of arms, which has carried 
forward the recent struggle in the United States 
to the entire and perpetual abolition of slavery 
there. Slavery has ceased in every Protestant 
country, not because governments have conceded 
freedom as a privilege, but because men have 

4* 



42 LECTUEE n. — THE CHBISTIAN EELIGIOK 

claimed it as a right ; but the right has never been 
seen and never maintained except as the Christian 
doctrine has first revealed it to men, and then 
inspired them with the hope of its possession. 

Christianity has not only shown itself sufficient 
to reform political institutions and improve the 
social condition of men, but it has wrought reli- 
gious changes still more extensive. It is the 
only religion which has ever been able effectually 
to root out and supplant another. To a certain 
degree we find in different nations different sys- 
tems of religion, each of which expresses some 
national trait, and represents a certain phase of 
national development. Resting so firmly in 
national peculiarities, they hold a strong ground, 
from which they are only with extreme difficulty 
dislodged. And, as a matter of fact, no power 
has been able to overcome this difficulty except 
that of the Christian religion alone. In other 
instances where two religions have come in con- 
tact, the result has been either their amalgama- 
tion, or the temporary yielding of the one to the 
other by the constraint of physical power. You 
know how that Buddhism in India overbore and 
crowded down for a time the prevailing Brah- 
minism, which, however, it did not destroy ; but 
which showed itself able, when the opportunity 
came, to throw aside the later faith, and regain 



WORTHY OF EXAMINATION 43 

its old ascendency. There is no longer any 
Buddhism in the land of its earliest and exten- 
sive triumphs ; while it maintains itself among 
the millions where it is found in other lands only 
in so far as it has availed itself of forces not 
originally its own. Christianity is the only reli- 
gion, which, by the simple might of its own 
principles, has ever truly taken the place of 
another. And can it have done this, unless it 
has something which penetrates deeper suscep- 
tibilities of the soul than are reached by the 
feelings of a race, or the thoughts of a nation ? 

And whatever this religion has done has been 
always in face of an intense opposition. Its 
victories, unparalleled and mighty as they are, 
have never been achieved without a struggle. 
There have always been unbelievers outside the 
Church, who have found fault with its evidences 
and rejected its claims. There have sometimes 
also been found men within the church content 
to receive the emoluments and dignities of high 
ecclesiastical office, while they have despised the 
doctrines and derided the faith they were ex- 
pected to teach. I enter here into no criticism 
upon their conduct, and only allude to it to 
make clear the fact that all the hold of the 
Christian system, now or in the past, on the 
thoughts of men, has been obtained by a triumph 



44 LECTUEE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGIOK 

of its principles through a sore conflict with 
opposing thoughts. Moreover, this conflict of 
thought but partly represents that deeper hostil- 
ity of sentiment and will which this religion 
necessarily excites in every breast. It is not 
only a form of doctrine, but it demands a changed 
purpose and a new life from all who receive it. 
The words of Jesus to his original disciples are 
the only terms in which his claims can be pre- 
sented : '' If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow 
me " (Matt. xvi. 24). '' He that loveth father 
or mother more than me is not worthy of me ; 
and he that loveth son or daughter more than me 
is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not 
his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of 
me" (Matt. x. 37, 38). 

In this continued struggle with the thoughts 
and sentiments and will of men, the Christian 
religion has been continuously victorious. No 
one can study its history without noting that 
apparent reverses have revealed themselves, in 
the course of time, to have been genuine steps 
of progress ; and no one can study the history of 
the world without noting that its only line of 
unfading light and growing splendor is that 
traversed by the progress of the Christian faith. I 
know, that, in Christian lands, there are evils still 



WOETHY OF EXAMIKATIOl^. 45 

unsubdued which Christianity aims to destroy ; * 
but the undoubted fact remains of their steady 
diminution before the steady growth of Christian 
influence. By the ancestors of the present 
Christian nations, war was recognized as a 
nation's normal state, and the same word desig- 
nated a foreigner and a foe ; but surely all this 
has changed, and the feeling grows in Christian 
lands that nations should live together in peace. 
In confirmation of this remark, I point to the way 
in which, during the present year, two of the 
most prominent Christian nations have settled a 
grave international dispute. England and the 
United States agreed to refer to arbitration a 
matter y/hich formerly they would have sought 
to settle with the sword; and that this agreement 
has been secured by a growth, in both these 
nations, of the Christian sentiment respecting 
war and national friendship, will not be denied. 
Christianity seeks the overthrow of all evil 
among men. Its grand aim, which it unceasingly 
puts forth, is to remove all war and oppression, 
and vice and crime, to elevate and ennoble and 
purify all the relations of man to his fellow-man, 
and to bind all nations together in the organic 
unity of a body wherein Christian love is the 
in-dwelling soul, and Christ himself the ever- 
living head. To its power of accomplishing all 



46 LECTURE n. — THE CHRISTIAK RELIGION 

this, the Christian religion fearlessly challenges 
every scrutiny. It points to its principles, and to 
what it has already done, as the evidence of its 
aim, and of what it can do. Slowly, indeed, but 
none the less steadily and mightily, is its great 
work moving on. Notwithstanding the difficulties 
ever in its path, it holds a stronger power in the 
world to-day than it has ever done before. 
From the icy north, from the sunny south, from 
the far-off isles of the sea, from the roving tribes 
of the desert, from the savage wanderers of the 
forest, from the cultivated circles of enlightened 
life, from city and from hamlet, from rich and 
poor, from learned and ignorant men, from every 
class and clime, there come the trophies of its 
victorious power. Look at the influence of the 
Christian religion as it now actually exists, and 
tell me what this marvel means, if that which 
causes it be not of God. 

3. Pass now from these general considera- 
tions, and see what this religion does for the indi- 
vidual character. It aims to change and reform 
men; which it also has certainly done, in un- 
numbered instances. It has entered the heart, 
and tamed fierce passions, and transformed ob- 
stinate prejudices, and rooted out deep-seated 
desires, and given new hopes, a new purpose, 
and a new life ; and it offers to do this in behalf 



WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. 47 

of every one wlio will follow its precepts. Lool:, 
in illustration of its power, at the changes which 
it wrought in such a man as Saul of Tarsus. No 
one can doubt the general historical accuracy of 
the narrative respecting him as given in the New 
Testament ; and can any one fail to discern a su- 
perhuman agency in the transformation wrought 
in the character and life of this extraordinary 
man ? You see the bold and haughty young 
Pharisee, highly gifted and educated, profoundly 
acquainted with the Mosaic law, profoundly 
believing in all its requirements, and scrupulous- 
ly rigid in their performance. He cannot brook 
the doctrine taught by the disciples of the cruci- 
fied Nazarene, that the morning and evening 
sacrifice, and all the ordinances of the Jewish 
ritual, are now meaningless observances. This 
doctrine fills him with rage ; and, breathing out 
threatenings and slaughter, he goes forth, armed 
with lawful authority, to put it down ; but sud- 
denly there is a change. The angry persecutor 
is found meek, gentle, submissive, sitting at the 
feet and receiving instruction of a humble dis- 
ciple of the Crucified One. The Crucified One ! 
Paul himself would have crucified him before, 
but he would die for him now. There is now 
nothing to his eye so glorious as this same Jesus 
of Nazareth whom he had persecuted. He 



48 LECTUEE n. — THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

enters upon his service. He gives up all his 
former hopes and prospects in life. For the love 
of Jesus he consents to a life of severe toil and 
sore privation, and at length of cruel martyrdom. 
But none of these things move him, neither 
counts he his life dear unto himself, that he 
might testify the gospel of the grace of God. 
" What things were gain to me," he says, '' those 
I counted loss for Christ ; yea, doubtless, and I 
count all things but loss for the excellency of 
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for 
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and 
do count them but dung that I may win Christ, 
and be found in him, not having mine own right- 
eousness which is of the law, but that which is 
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness 
which is of God by faith " (Phil. iii. 7-9). How 
do you explain, gentlemen, a fact like this, an 
undoubted fact, which, however conspicuous, is 
far from standing alone in the annals of Christian 
history? Changes equally impressive abound 
in lives less prominent than Paul's. To count- 
less numbers who have hated the name of Jesus, 
that name has become the dearest of all names, 
in earth or heaven. Souls burdened with a sense 
of sin, deeply conscious of that guilt which every 
thoughtful soul, wherever found, sometimes feels, 
have gained deliverance through their faith in 



WOBTHY OF EXAMINATIOK. 49 

him, whom they ever after love and praise, as 
their Life and Lord and All-sufficient Saviour. 
They testify to his ever-living power. Their 
lives, as well as their words, bear witness that 
this same Jesus that was crucified lives, and is 
able and willing to save. Jesus saves. BLe does 
SAVE. If you doubt it, come and see. Examine 
the records of Christian biography with which 
Christian literature abounds. Take instances, 
which I doubt not are found in your own city. 
And if you say there is so much hypocrisy and 
deceit that you know not what or whom to trust, 
take the best of all courses, and test the matter 
by your own experience. In that sense of sin, 
which you, I know, sometimes have, and of 
whose power your Hindu records furnish such 
copious and such impressive illustrations, — a 
sense which continually deepens in the thoughtful 
soul, while the fact which it discloses becomes 
more dark and terrible the more profoundly it is 
considered, — Jesus Christ offers to save you; 
and you have the surest way to test his truth and 
strength, by making application of his word. 

4. Jesus Christ never fails to satisfy the soul 
that tru^s him. ^'If any man thirst, let him 
come unto me and drink," he said; and a great 
multitude, whom no man can number, have hied 
to the fountain, and found joy and peace in its 



50 LECTUEE n. — THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION 

living streams. It has been a source of com- 
fort and strength, alike to the profoundest and 
the simplest understanding. It satisfied the 
great soul of Chahiiers; and it satisfied the 
poor and ignorant woman who applied to him for 
admission to the Church, and who could only tell 
him what she thought of Christ in these words: 
''I cannot describe him, but I would die for 
him." Lofty and low, learned and ignorant, have 
alike found in the gospel all they could hope or 
desire. Its gifts are unrestricted by any land. 
They come to all people. It offers the richest 
blessings, freely, to any heart that will receive 
them ; and no one who has actually tested it has 
found the offer vain. 

Whether Christianity be divine or not, that 
which it has actually done merits for it the most 
earnest attention of every man. A religion 
which can go about among the poor and lowly 
and uneducated, and which can gladden and 
strengthen and purify them wherever it goes, 
and which at the same time can feed and fill and 
satisfy the lofty intellects which, in every age, 
have bowed to its power, may have in it some- 
thing which every man needs, and into which 
every man surely should inquire. 

I do not suppose that any fair examination of 
the evidences of the Christian religion ever led 



WORTHY OF EXAMINATIOl!^. 51 

to their rejection. Such an examination has 
never been given by those most prominent in 
their denial of this faith ; for their utterances 
indicate either an ignorance of its character and 
claims, or a prejudice against them, — states of 
mind which show that a fair examination has 
not been made. Two men of fine intellect and 
thorough scholarship, but disbelievers in Chris- 
tianity, once set themselves to write treatises for 
its overthrow. They took each a distinct theme ; 
but each became converted to the Christian 
faith by the investigations which his theme 
required. They wrote their treatises, which we 
still have, — Gilbert West's '' Observations on the 
Resurrection of Christ," and Lord Lyttleton's 
" Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul,'- 
and which illustrate what I suppose would always 
follow a thorough examination of Christianity, 
even by an unbeliever. I might instance Nean- 
der, the grea.t church historian, born a Jew, and 
converted from Judaism because he saw that the 
evidence of the gospel was irrefutable ; or Cole- 
ridge and Schelling, who have exercised so 
potent an influence upon the currents of philo- 
sophic thought, and who, starting with an entire 
unbelief in Christianity, were compelled to ac- 
cept it by the requirements of the profoundest 
speculation ; but enough already appears to 



62 LECTITBB n. — THE OHEISTIAIJ RELIGION 

force the conviction that Christianity not only 
ought to be examined by every man, but that 
its examination is the most important work 
which any man who doubts it can possibly 
undertake. 

Gentlemen, if Christianity be true, two thmgs 
are also true : you are saved by it, and you are 
lost without it ; and these are also true of every 
human soul. If Christianity be true, Jesus 
Christ can save, and he is the only Saviour. If 
this system has truly come from God, then God 
has so loved the world that he gave his only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life : and 
then also is there salvation in no other ; for there 
is none other name given under heaven among 
men, whereby we can be saved. Is there any 
other question, therefore, so momentous to you 
as this? any other upon which your eternal 
life or death hinges ? Remember that this ques- 
tion is not, whether Christianity is the best of all 
religions, but whether it is the only religion 
which is truly good. It claims to be the only 
scheme of salvation. It claims to be God's 
method; and God's method must be one and 
single. Am I not, then, justified in saying that 
no question relating to power or enjoyment, or 
even your bodily life, — no question that can be 



WOETHY OF EXAMTNATIOIT. 63 



named, — has sucli interest for yon, sncli nndying 
interest, as the question whether it is true that 
Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Saviour of 
the world ? 



5* 



Ill 

THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 



Gentlemen, — On the walls of tlie famous 
lighthouse of Eddystone is the inscription, ^' To 
give light and to save life." It tells the reason 
why the lighthouse stands there. The benighted 
mariner, approaching the Cornwall coast at a 
point of peculiar peril, beholds the beacon, and 
escapes the danger. Twice since a lighthouse 
was first erected there, has it been destroyed ; 
and the wrecks of costly vessels, and the loss of 
precious lives, which, in each instance, ensued, 
furnish copious testimony to its value. No one 
doubts, that, by giving light, it is also the means 
of saving life. He who in full sight of the 
danger would still press heedlessly upon it, 
would be a madman. 

Now, reasoning from analogy, it is very easy 
to argue, that, if there were only some spiritual 
lighthouse disclosing the perils of the soul, the 
voyager of life would steer his course with 



6i 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 55 

safety ; but the analogy does not hold. In the 
spiritual world life is not saved by light : spir- 
itual perils are not avoided, even though they 
are seen. If light were sufficient for safety, 
there would really be no danger of this sort ; 
for spiritual light shines unceasingly and every- 
where. The light of the natural sun, filling the 
heavens and flooding the earth, is but the symbol 
of that effulgence which fills the moral world 
with a brightness outshining the sun. The 
proof of this is seen in the striking uniformity 
in the opinions of men respecting moral truth 
and obligation. People the most diverse and 
remote, with the most extraordinary differences 
of government and religion and social usages, 
are yet agreed upon the foundation questions of 
right and duty. Such men as Epictetus and 
Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Socrates and 
Shakya-Muni and Zoroaster and Confucius show 
that the light of duty is original and univer- 
sal in human nature, shining with different 
degrees of clearness, but in every man sufficient- 
ly to show him where his safety lies. Whether 
these rays of light are so uniform because the 
shinings of one divine Sun, or what their expla- 
nation, I do not now inquire. I only wish to 
point to their universal prevalence, and to make 
prominent the truth, that they belong to a man 



66 LECTURE in. 

just as his manhood does, and are as essential 
to him, and as inseparable from him, as is his 
human nature itself. 

But we cannot contemplate this fact without 
meeting also another, equally prominent and 
universal. Clear as is the light, undoubted 
as is the voice of duty, men do not follow it. 
In this I only state a matter of actual fact, 
apparent to yourselves and to every one. Is 
it not true, that men in general do not live up 
to their moral convictions ? I do not care to 
ask or argue the question whether there are any 
exceptions to this rule ; for it suffices if you ac- 
knowledge that there are some men who do not 
do what they know they ought to do. And is 
it not indisputably true, that great multitudes, to 
say the least, are justly liable to this charge ? 
Can you name any virtue upon which men have 
not turned their backs, in defiance of light not 
only, but also of entreaty and expostulation ? 
And is there any vice or crime or sin, in the 
long catalogue of transgression, which men have 
not actually chosen and continued in, notwith- 
standing they saw the wrong which would thus 
be done, and the ruin which would thus ensue ? 
The voyager of life has a chart on which his 
course is clearly traced. Every peril is dis- 
tinctly noted. Lighthouses stand along every 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 67 

dangerous coast. Beacons blaze from every 
cliff. He has a compass which never varies, and 
the stars are shining where there is no sun; but 
all this will not keep him fi^om destruction. He 
will steer upon the shoals, and be wrecked upon 
the breakers, notwithstanding all his light and 
warnings; for he has done it, and is doing it 
still. Who has not read of such instances in 
the past, and who does not see them all around 
him at the present day ? And this, we should 
remember, is not simply the case with unlettered 
men, but is even more conspicuously true re- 
specting persons of culture, in whom the light 
shines clearest and farthest. Who are the 
monsters of vice and crime, staining the bloody 
pages of past history with the darkest dye, and 
exceeding the prevailing wickedness of their 
time by the depth of their own corruption, or 
who to-day are the men upon whom your eye 
fixes as the chief foes to law and liberty and 
social order, but those whose clearness of intelli- 
gence has only made their iniquity more clear ? 
It was a Roman poet, and a pagan, who uttered 
what every^ far-seeing observer echoes: ''I see 
and approve the better, but I follow the worse." 
It is thus apparent that the trouble with 
human nature relates to the inner source and 
centre of a man's moral purposes and moral life. 



58 LECTURE in. 

It is not the intellect, but the will, which is at 
fault. I make no inquiry here about the origin 
of this state of things. I simply deal with 
actual facts, respecting which there can be no 
dispute. However originating, there is actually 
found, in the human will, a deep perverseness, 
which the human intellect is abundantly able to 
disclose, but not in the least able to destroy. If 
we do not like this fact, it still remains inexor- 
ably true ; and if we shut our eyes upon it, think- 
ing • thus it is not there, this is only as the 
ostrich thrusts his head in the bushes, and deems 
himself tinseen by the hunter because pre- 
vented 'from seeing him. The fact itself cannot 
long be ignored. The conviction of a prevail- 
ing lack of harmony between our moral conduct 
and our moral insight is too clear and too prom- 
inent to be hid. It forces itself to view, and no 
one can see it unmoved to pain. Call it by 
whatever name, — a sense of wrong or guilt or 
sin, — it carries with it a consciousness of blame- 
worthiness which contains both shame and fear, 
and is the source of the deepest misery the soul 
ever experiences. No torture of the rack or 
the stake has equalled the agony which men 
have found in the conviction that they are not 
what they ought to be. Against this conviction 
arguments are futile. To say that it is a phan- 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 59 

tasm of a morbid consciousness meets the un- 
doubted fact, that it grows with the increasing 
knowledge of ourselves, and that it is not con- 
fined to the weak and ignorant, but is sometimes 
found with the strongest force in the strongest 
minds. To suppose it occasioned by certain 
peculiarities of endowment or early discipline 
contradicts its exhibition by persons of the most 
diverse traits, and of exactly opposite training. 
It is not confined to Christian lands; but in- 
stances are not wanting among the unchristian 
nations, where the consciousness of guilt has 
uttered itself in terms absolutely appalling. 
Some of the most startling and pathetic exam- 
ples of this consciousness are furnished by your 
own Hindu records. The truth is, that, wherever 
any clear insight into the actual condition of 
human nature prevails, a blameworthiness, with 
its attendant fear and shame, appears; and we 
can neither ignore its presence nor destroy its 
power. 

You will agree with me, gentlemen, that a 
remedy for this condition would be an incalcu- 
lable blessing. If there could be something to 
destroy this prevailing wretchedness by drying 
up its source, — which could relieve from the 
sense of evil by removing the evil itself, — • 
would not this be the greatest boon which human 



60 LECTUBE m. 

nature could either receive or desire? Surely 
no region ravaged by a pestilence, and crowded 
thick with the dying and the dead, ever needed 
relief so perishingly, as the world, with its undy- 
ing consciousness of sin, — more destructive 
and more fruitful of misery than any mortal 
malady, — needs salvation. Do you not in this 
agree with me ? Does not the world itself, 
through all its systems of religion, express the 
same? 

It is clear, that if any true salvation be found, 
it must reach the will, and not stop short with 
any processes of the intellect. A man's intellect 
would be well enough, if his will did not lead 
him astray ; but his deceived heart turns him 
aside, and instils his intellect with falsehood, not- 
withstanding its witness to the truth. There is 
something exceedingly subtle in these processes 
of the human mind, which, if we are wise, we 
shall not overlook. It has become a proverb 
that — 

"A man convinced against liis will 
Is of the same opinion still.'^ 

Men are generally unconscious, till they prooe 
themselves, of the net-work of sophistries which 
the will weaves around the intellect. It is not 
uncommon for persons to learn that they have 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 61 

been strangely deceived, and that they held fast 
to some false doctrine even while they thought 
they were holding to the truth ; and when 
some clear truth, with overpowering conviction, 
has penetrated and dispelled all delusions, and 
has poured its light in such full effulgence upon 
the intellect that the will was no longer able to 
cloak it, men have sometimes found that their 
will has not yielded to the truth, but has turned 
away from it in hatred, or set itself against it in 
rage. I am not dealing now with speculations, 
gentlemen, but with undoubted facts of human 
nature, of which some of you may have been 
conscious, and which all of you, as close observ- 
ers, must have seen. The actual fact is before 
us, — the darkest, saddest, and most terrible fact 
which can be named, — that, when the will is no 
longer able to blind the intellect, it still can and 
does refuse to yield to the truth ; it can and does 
set itself in opposition to the truth ; and the truth, 
thus, which has deeply convinced, does not save. 
The plant looks upwards spontaneously, and wel- 
comes the sunlight which is to weave from its 
tissues its perfection of beauty. The animal 
runs without constraint to his food, and rejoices 
in the sustenance which is to give him the com- 
pleteness of his strength. But the human soul, 
needing a perfect conformity to the truth for its 



62 LECTUEE III. 

beauty and strengtb, more than any natural 
thing needs its natural support, is able to pervert, 
and attempts to poison, the very source of its 
purity and health. There can be no possible 
remedy for this which does not, besides convin- 
cing the intellect, also convert the will. Any salva- 
tion for man which can bring true health and 
gladness and purity of soul must possess, not sim- 
ply a means of instruction, but have also power 
of inspiration. It must be able to. furnish to the 
will a new principle of life and liberty. 

But a deeply-interesting question here arises, 
How could such a remedy ever be found ? If 
the true remedy must work upon the will, what 
sort of elements, to enable it thus to do, must it 
possess? ^'Mere intellect," said the lynx-eyed 
Aristotle, ''mere intellect never moves any thing ;" 
while it is not only movement, but a movement 
in exact counteraction of another already existing, 
that men must have in order to be saved. 
Whence such a movement ? Plainly from no in- 
creasing light of duty. In a French story, pop- 
ular not long ago, there is a scene in which an 
escaped convict finds himself in a crowded court- 
room, where his own crime has been charged 
upon another person then on trial for the same. 
It is a case of mistaken identity ; but the evidence 
is clear, and the unfortunate prisoner is likely to 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 63 

be condemned. The real offender, unknown to 
any one present, but fully conscious of the mis- 
take which has been made, and the wrong which 
is likely to follow, is conscious also that he ought 
to prevent the wrong by acknowledging him- 
self to be the criminal. We are then treated to 
an elaborately-drawn process of argumentation, 
which the guilty man is supposed to hold with 
himself, to determine whether he shall do what 
his convictions of duty demand. The result of 
the process is his coming forward, and declaring 
to the astonished court that the prisoner ought 
to be released, while he himself should rightfully 
take his place. Such a scene may do for a 
French novel ; but it is not high art, and does not 
reveal the great artist, because it is not true to 
actual life. Such a result could never be reached 
in such a way. The moment a man begins to 
argue with himself whether he will do his duty, 
he has already secretly settled it in his will that 
the duty shall not be done ; and, unless something 
other than his argument comes in as a motive, the 
end of it all will find him exactly where he stood 
at the beginning. No man does his duty simply 
from the knowledge of it. ''Knowledge," said 
one, who in far reaching insight was Aristotle's 
peer, '' knowledge puffeth up, but charity — love, 



64 LECTUEE III* 

the living root of freedom — buildeth up." ^ Un- 
less a man loves righteousness, no knowledge can 
make him righteous. Love alone has strength to 
lead one to duty ; but love is not an inference. 
You reach it by no process of argument. You 
do not even choose to love. Love inspires your 
choice, and is not its object. Love enters the 
will with a living inspiration, and makes one 
willing in the day of its power. 

From all this it follows that no self-renovation is 
possible. The enslaved will cannot emancipate 
itself We need the power of another will to be 
exercised upon our own. It is quite clear, if 
closely scanned, that nothing can work upon a 
will but a will itself, or something into which a 
will enters. A thought may instruct us ; but we 
can only be inspired by a person, or a sentiment 
or deed which comes from, and carries with it, a 
living personal agency. It is not light which 
saves us, but only life. It is not the precepts of 
life, but life itself, which alone can lead and lift us 
into life. As in the world of organic existence, 
life is only begotten and nourished by life ; so in 
the moral and spiritual realm, all deep senti- 
ments, all great deeds, are evoked and nourished 
by something kindred to themselves. The first 

* 1 Cor. viii. 1. 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 65 

incitement and only support to any personal 
activity come from what is itself personal. 

If there be, therefore, any salvation for men, 
it must, first of all and last of all, possess this ele- 
ment of personal power ; it must be able to enter 
the soul with a true inspiration, delivering the 
enslaved will from its bondage, and giving it the 
joy of a true liberty by infusing it with the 
strength of a perfect life. And it can only do 
this by presenting before us, in a form we can 
apprehend, a living person, whose sentiments 
and deeds can truly inspire us, whose will can 
become truly dominant over our will, and who 
thus becomes truly our King and Lord, to whom 
we yield, and whom we follow in the joy of our 
new-found freedom, and with the full strength of 
our new-found life. Would not the knowledge 
of such a person be most desirable ? If there 
could be found a teacher who is also a saviour, 
— one who could both instruct us in duty and in- 
spire us to a living obedience, might it not be 
claimed for him that he should receive the hom- 
age of the world ? 

To these facts add another equally clear. 
Among all the personages of history, only One 
has ever proposed for himself such a work ; and 
only in behalf of One has it ever been claimed 
that he has actually accomplished it. There 

6* 



66 LECTUEE m. 

have been many great teachers, to whose doc- 
trines we yield our assent, and to whose lives we 
give our admiration ; but only One among them 
all claims to be a saviour. To a world dying for 
want of a living, personal saviour, only One liv- 
ing person has offered himself as all that the 
world needs. You know to whom I refer. You 
anticipate me when I say that Jesus Christ alone, 
through all the ages, claims to be a saviour for 
men. He is indeed a teacher. He stands con- 
spicuous ; he stands peerless among all the sages 
of the world. You yourselves will acknowledge 
his pre-eminence here. But not on this account, 
not simply because He is the greatest of teachers, 
does he claim the allegiance of mankind. The 
greatness of Jesus Christ is in his offer of sal- 
vation and his fitness to save. 

Any heroic deed carries with it some power 
of inspiration. Any act of self-forgetfulness or 
self-devotion has a tendency to kindle in other 
souls the same. Love begets love. But as all 
the light and warmth in the natural world come, 
through various transmutations, only from the 
sun ; so every loving and self- for get ting deed has 
its source, through whatever medium transmitted, 
in some shining of God's love. In him alone is 
the fulness of love. From him alone can all love 
spring; and only in the clear manifestation of 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 67 

him and his love, in a form easy to discern and 
impossible to deny, is there an exhaustless ener- 
gy of inspiration sufficient to overcome all self- 
seeking, and to kindle every selfish will with the 
life and liberty of self-forgetting love. But such 
a manifestation requires the personal appearance 
of God, in a living embodiment of himself 
among men. Only thus can we most truly and 
fully receive the inspiration of his love. 

Theism speaks of God as a living spirit, to 
whom human souls may come and worship ; but 
it presents no living motive thus to do. Much 
as we might wish it otherwise, the lamentable 
fact remains, that men do not spontaneously come 
to God. Left to themselves, they seek their own 
ends, and turn away from him. Simple theism 
has nothing to reverse this tendency. Its thought 
of God is too vague to have personal power over 
men. As the sunlight, all glorious though it be, 
does not warm the atmosphere through which it 
passes till its beams have been reflected from 
the earth ; so the light of the knowledge of God 
may shine resplendent through all our thoughts, 
without any vivifying warmth, till our thoughts 
receive it through some living reflection of him. 
Herein is the fitness of Jesus Christ to inspire 
and save men. He appears before us as the liv- 
ing God in human form. It is claimed of him 



68 LECTURE m, 

that he is the eternal Word, which was in the 
beginning with God, and which was God; by 
whom all things were made, and without whom 
there was not any thing made that was made."^ 
He repeatedly makes the same claim for him- 
self, f He supports this claim by his own words 
not only, but by a power over Nature which bore 
witness to his words. He showed himself to be 
the Lord of things created ; and thus he mani- 
fested forth his glory, and his disciples believed 
on him.t Nature appears as his servant, which 
hears his voice, and does his will. He turns the 
water into wine. He speaks to the winds and 
waves, and they obey him. The trees of the field, 
and the fish of the sea, do his bidding. He heals 
diseases of every sort. He makes the blind to 
see, and the deaf to hear, and the dead to live. 
Through the three years in which his public life 
was manifested. Nature is seen to move as re- 
sponsive to his will as the pulse beats with the 
throbbing of the heart; and, when he was cruci- 
fied, dead, and buried, he rose from the sepulchre, 
as the Lord of life, with power over death and 



* John i. 

t Matt. ix. 5, 6 ; xi. 27 ; xviii. 20 ; xxvi. 64 ; xxviii. 20. Mark ii. 
9, 10. Luke V. 23, 24. John v. 19, 20, 23 ; viii. 58 ; ix. 36, 37 ; x. 15; 
30, 38 ; xiv. 9, 13, 14; xv. 23 ; xvi. 15 ; xvii. 10, 21, 

J John ii. 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 69 

tlie grave. These facts are supported by so many 
and such, competent witnesses, that an unwilling 
world has been forced to accept them; and they 
stand out in the face of the most searching scru- 
tiny ever directed towards any facts, with, an 
evidence unrefuted because irrefutable. 

The significance of these facts is in the evi- 
dence they furnish that the Creator and Lord of 
Nature is man's Redeemer. God is manifest in 
the flesh, that he might reconcile the world unto 
himself In Jesus Christ, God comes nigh to 
man, in order to lift him from his degradation 
and sin unto the purity and the blessedness of a 
divine fellowship. This is not because of man's 
repentance or propitiation, or good works of 
any sort, but solely because God loves him, and 
seeks to save him. God commendeth his love 
to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, i.e., be- 
fore we had purchased his favor by any act of 
obedience, Christ died for us."^ Here is not only 
a work of God's free grace ; but whoever thinks 
carefully will see that in no other imaginable 
way could God's love to man be made known. 
It is very clear that this love is revealed through 
none of the processes of Nature. Not only have 
men failed to find it there, — all religions from 

* Rom. V. 8. 



70 LECTURE m. 

tlie light of Nature giving no glimpse of God's 
grace, — but Nature cannot give man any such 
revelation, simply because Nature has not got it 
to give. Nature reveals the Divine Existence. 
The things made declare their Maker. Nature 
gives vast proof of God's power and wisdom. 
The earth and the heavens are resplendent with 
these glories. Nature also teaches us his benef- 
icent goodness. The infinite adaptations of 
created things to living wants, and the boundless 
provision of Nature for our sentient need, are 
everywhere recognized, and are fitted to awaken 
universal praise. So, also, when we look widely 
into the course of history, and see the working 
of a supreme Ruler, who putteth down kings and 
setteth up kings, who enlargeth the nations and 
straiteneth them again, we find witness of a 
divine righteousness and justice, to which the 
human conscience also clearly responds. But in 
all this there is no evidence that God loves man, 
or that he can forgive sin. His beneficent gifts, 
doubtless, show that he desires our happiness; 
but they contain no revelation of his love. 
These gifts are but the products of his will. 
They cost him nothing. He has but to speak, 
and they are done. But love is the leaving of 
one's self for another: love is the giving of one's 
self to another. God's love to man cannot 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 71 

be shown in any gifts of his creation, however 
rich and numerous. It is the bestowal of him- 
self, the gift of his uncreated fulness to needy 
souls, which alone can bring any revelation of 
his love. Moreover, the gift truly expressive of 
love must cost the giver something. Love is a 
sacred and sacrificial fire, which can burn only on 
an altar ; and God's love, when profoundly consid- 
ered, is inseparable from the thought of a sacrifice. 
God's incarnation, and the manifestation of him- 
self to us in the person and life and death of 
Jesus Christ, is a sacrifice from whose mysteri- 
ous depths comes a declaration of grace and love 
which Nature had no voice to utter, and which 
man himself had otherwise no power to discern. 
This love of God, thus revealed, has a power 
to inspire men ; and the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, 
is also life to the world. For, let one grasp the 
full significance of the statement ; let him truly 
see that the work which men have vainly sought 
to accomplish by their sacrifices and rites, God 
has wrought by the gift of himself in the person 
of his Son ; let it clearly appear that God has 
done all this for men, not because they deserved 
it, but only because he loved them ; not because 
he needed them, but because they stood in such 
perishing need of him ; not because he should 



72 LECTURE in. 

be enriched by the returning allegiance which, 
his love should enkindle, but only that they 
might be endowed with his unspeakable fulness: 
let it but be known that God so loved the world that 
he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life,*^ — and there is a power in this love 
which enters the will with a living inspiration, 
and kindles there a love, which shall render 
obedience in liberty to the law of righteousness. 
He who can stand against all the revelations of 
law, who has resisted every commandment, and 
refused obedience, must yield to the power of 
the love of the Son of God. Does not love al- 
ways seek and secure its counterpart ? Is it not 
thus even with human love ? I have only to 
know, that, among human hearts, there is one 
which loves me, and though I have scorned and 
hated and bitterly entreated it, yet its love shall 
melt me, and bring me to penitence and grati- 
tude and love. In like manner, if I can truly see 
that God loves me, and has given himself in 
Jesus Christ to me, — as truly and as fully to me 
as though I stood alone in the great immensity, 
the only object of his care and grace, — whatever 
has been my attitude towards himself and hia 

* John iii. 16. 



THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 73 

law hitherto, this knowledge of his love becomes 
eternal life in whomsoever it is received. 

I have heard of an artist who wished to make 
a statue of Christ. The idea filled his soul ; but, 
before attempting to express it in marble, he 
sought to mould it in clay. To test his work, he 
set the clay image upon a pedestal, and sum- 
moned his little child to behold it. There was 
no inscription upon the image ; none of the ordi- 
nary accompaniments belonging to the represen- 
tations of Christ — no cross, no crown of thorns 
— were there; but so perfectly had the artist rep- 
resented his ideal in the clay form, that it is said 
the child, as she gazed upon it, reverently folded 
her hands, and exclaimed, '^ The Redeemer !" In 
like manner, I believe that the portraiture of 
Jesus Christ and his work, as given in the New 
Testament, needs only to be contemplated by the 
childlike heart ready to receive its impressions, 
and there will come to the soul a revelation of 
the divine love, wdiich carries its own witness to 
its truth, and which is able to change any soul, 
however selfish, into^the likeness of God's love. 
The life of Jesus Christ has a light which is also 
the life of men. 



IV. 

THE NEED OP A DIVINE WOEK IN MAN'S 
EEDEMPTION. 



Gentlemen, — The universal prevalence of a 
religious sentiment lias been often remarked. 
" Go over the world," says Plutarch, ''and you 
may find cities without walls, without theatres, 
without money, without art ; but a city without a 
temple or an altar, or some order of worship, no 
man ever saw." There is, almost everywhere, 
connected with this sentiment, the conviction that 
God has revealed himself unto men in some 
special way, in accordance with which alone a 
union with him becomes possible. So deep and 
wide-spread is this conviction, that attempts to 
ignore it, or explain it away, have always failed ; 
while the authors of these attempts have some- 
times borne unwitting testimony to the power of 
this conviction, even u]3on themselves. Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury, who has been called the 
prince of English deists, in his autobiography, 



74 



LECTUEE IV. 75 

published by his family some years after his death, 
relates, that having written his book, in which he 
had sought to set aside the notion of a divine 
revelation, and being in doubt as to the pro- 
priety of its publication, he knelt before his open 
window, and prayed the Supreme Ruler to re- 
solve his doubts by an audible sign from heaven. 
He goes on to declare, that the answer was actu- 
ally, received ; and on the strength of the sign, 
which he supposed to be a revelation from God, 
he publishes his book, in which he seeks to show 
that any other revelation from God than that 
which the original light of nature furnishes is 
both unnecessary and impossible. Lord Herbert 
pens the account, apparently unconscious of the 
singular contradiction of his act to his doctrine ; 
but the account illustrates how ineradicable is 
the conviction that men need a divine revelation, 
and that, in some way, the need can be supplied. 
And yet I meet the question very frequently 
among yourselves, whether men have not suf- 
ficient light of their own, and whether they need 
any other way than their own repentance to gain 
access to God. What need of a book and a 
mediator? you say. Cannot we find God, and 
approach unto him, directly of ourselves ? Such 
a question is doubtless worth consideration ; and 
yet, if you closely note it, you will see that the 



76 LECTURE IV.— NEED OF A DIVINE 

very terms of the inquiry furnish its sufficient 
reply. For who are we ? and who is God ? and 
how can the finite find the Absolute ? or how 
can we approach him ? The truth is, the finite 
only finds itself through the Absolute, and we 
only gain our own self-consciousness through our 
consciousness of God ; for the partial, the in- 
complete, has no power of self-revelation. The 
partial is never disclosed save in the presence of 
the Perfect, — the incomplete in the light of the 
All-complete. As there is no standard of the ugly, 
the false, and the wrong ; as these can only be 
measured and manifested by the beautiful, the 
true, and the good, — thus also the finite cannot 
limit itself, and cannot make itself known even 
as finite. It is brought to light, it is seen to be, 
only in the presence of the Infinite. We there- 
fore have no being nor power to find God, save 
as he first finds us, and discloses ourselves to our- 
selves in the light of his presence. 

This point, correctly apprehended, is destruc- 
tive of a notion current among yourselves that 
our self-consciousness, inasmuch as it recognizes 
the self as other than God, is the very sum and 
substance of our sins. This surely cannot be, if 
our consciousness of self is only possible through 
our consciousness of God. Our personal being is 
in this personal self-consciousness ; and to call this 



WORK IK man's redemption. 77 

sin obliterates all moral distinctions, and falsifies 
the very ground of truth itself The fact of sin 
is deeper, and far different from this. Not that 
we are conscious of self as other than God ; but 
that, being thus conscious, we have deter- 
mined to centre the self upon itself rather than 
upon him, — this is the secret of our sin. We 
have sought self as an end, instead of God, and 
have thus voluntarily subjected ourselves to self- 
ishness as our law, instead of love ; and this is the 
source of our shame and guilt and death. God has 
not made us thus ; but we are the sole authors of 
our own sin. The self-consciousness which he 
gives is a reality, for it is founded in him ; and 
it is a good, for it is fitted to find purity and 
blessedness and life in him. Not in our self-con- 
sciousness, but in our self-determination, is our 
sin ; and not in the self-determination, which, 
abstractly considered, pertains to our freedom, and 
is involved in self-consciousness, but in the de- 
termination of the self, not simply by itself, but 
to and for itself, — a determination thus which 
chooses self, and prefers self, and serves self, rath- 
er than God. Sin does not consist in any limi- 
tation of our powers, of which God, in making us 
finite, is the wise and righteous Author, but in a 
direction of our powers, which, in our self- 
determination, we have made and chosen for 

7* 



78 LECTUEE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

ourselves. We recognize this sin as a wrong, for 
which we condemn ourselves, and which we 
know, also, to be worthy the condemnation of 
God. We suffer under this recognition, with a 
suffering as peculiar in kind as it is unequalled 
in degree. What consciousness does not testi- 
fy to the difference between the suffering which 
comes from a calamity uncaused by ourselves, and 
that which arises from our own sin ? To suffer 
wrong, and to do wrong; to have regret for 
what another has done to us, and to have remorse 
for what we ourselves have done, — what a broad 
gulf separates these two in every thoughtful 
mind ! To seek our own self-end rather than 
God; to make selfishness our motive and law rath- 
er than love, is an act of folly so stupendous, that 
a reasonable being must see its unreasonableness ; 
and, when one recognizes such an act and state as 
legitimately his own, he cannot but feel there- 
with the keenest sense of degradation. But the 
unreasonable is seen to be such, only in the light 
of the perfectly reasonable. It is the perfect 
by which alone the imperfect is measured and 
made manifest. God's revelation of himself 
is the light in which our self-consciousness be- 
comes disclosed; and it is in the knowledge of 
his all-perfect holiness, that we come to know 
our sin. In other words, sin becomes revealed to 




woEK IK man's redemption. 79 

tis, as contraiy to God's will ; and the clearer 
view we have of him, the more abhorrent to him 
does sin appear, and the more degrading to our- 
selves. It is his will, as revealed in the original 
light of our self-consciousness, that we should 
love him. Such a command is both wise and 
righteous, and calls for both our obedience and 
praise. It is the highest privilege, and the 
source of our only blessedness, to love God. To 
turn away from him, and make ourselves our 
centre, is the turning from life, and the choosing 
of. death. Selfishness is our curse and woe, 
though we have chosen it for our delight. This 
is no arbitrary arrangement ; for it only becomes 
manifest to us in the light of the Eternal Reason. 
We see it to be divinely reasonable and just that 
selfishness should blight every hope and destroy 
all joy. Self-seeking must ever be self-destruc- 
tive, for life is only in love. We speak truly when 
we say that God has ordained it thus ; but he has 
ordained it only because he saw its reasonable- 
ness, — only because it was worthy of him, as 
Eternal Reason, thus to do. Whatever is reason- 
able must ever be his will, not because any 
nature of things makes it so, nor because the 
reasonable is some external necessity which con- 
strains his will, but because God himself is the 
Absolute Reason. It is, therefore, most reasona- 



80 LECTXJEE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

able for the finite reason to love and worship 
God. lie is our rightful Lord. He is the uni- 
versal Sovereign ; and all the reasonable relations 
of things are ordained of his almighty and eter- 
nal will. The law which we should have obeyed, 
but have broken, — the law of love, — is a divine 
law.* The consequences of obedience or disobe- 
dience are divinely assigned. That the selfish- 
ness which is our sin is a curse to us, the greatest 
curse we can conceive ; that it brings with it ruin 
and every woe, — is a divine decree, which only 
expresses divine wisdom and all-perfect right- 
eousness ; a truth which, when profoundly con- 
sidered, becomes exceedingly terrible. Divine 
wisdom does not change ; divine righteousness 
is eternal. Is there, then, no change for the curse 
of sin ? Must these consequences of death and 
ruin be perpetual ? 

Explain it as we may, this question has actu- 
ally excited more earnest thought, and the an- 
swer to it awakened a darker terror, than . any 
other inquiry that has ever engaged the human 
mind. Neither the light of nature around us, 
nor the original revelation of God within, has 
been sufficient to indicate a reply of abiding 
peace. How inexorable is law, and how certain 
the penalty of transgression, as revealed in na- 
ture ! Throughout the natural world, no viola- 



WORK m man's bedemptiok. 81 

tion of law ever escapes its punislimeiit. No 
skill nor industry, no compromise nor subter- 
fuge, can, in the least, avail for a refuge. The 
broken law vindicates its majesty, and shows its 
power, in the exactest punishment. Why may 
it not be thus also in the spiritual world? Is 
there any thing in Nature to teach us otherwise ? 
Neither can we gain any different result from 
the light within. We know, from this light, that 
the penalty of the holy law we have broken 
offers no escape without some justifying reason; 
but whence can such a reason come ? Can we 
furnish it ? Our repentance for the past, and 
our perfect obedience for the future, give, of 
course, no justification of our previous wrong- 
doing ; but can they give us any hope of God's 
forgiveness ? Is it reasonable for him to for- 
give sin because of any thing which the sinner 
can do ? Have we any original knowledge of 
him which contains the probability, or even the 
possibility, of this ? Certainly, if such a reason 
exists, it must be ultimately in him. The only 
motive to himself must ever be himself It can 
never be, therefore, because of our repentance 
or good deeds, that he forgives us, but only 
because he finds it worthy of himself thus to do. 
But who shall tell us that it is thus worthy ? He 
has already told us that sin is worthy of punish- 



82 LECTURE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

ment. All the light of his holiness bears wit- 
ness, in the original insight of our consciences, 
to this. When we bring him, therefore, our 
oblations, — our penitence and prayers and 
purposes of obedience, — what evidence have 
we that he accepts the offering, and bids us go 
in peace ? His justice may never be set aside : 
he is, and must be, the eternally Just and Holy 
One ; but when the justice of punishment is so 
conspicuously revealed, how can we discern the 
justice of pardon ? How is it possible for God 
to be just, while he justifies the sinner? 

I believe the person who ponders this inquiry 
most profoundly, with no other light than his 
reason originally possesses, will hesitate longest 
before propounding any other answer than that 
which Nature constantly gives respecting the 
violation of her laws. Punishment is the eter- 
nally reasonable merit of sin, and God must be 
eternally reasonable. How, then, can punishment 
fail ? xirbitrarily to exchange punishment for 
pardon is unreasonable, and thus impossible for 
God. The exchange, if made at all, must be 
for a reason, all-sufl&cient to himself; and what 
can this be but himself? Only for his own sake, 
because of his infinite excellence alone, would 
it be right for him to pardon ; but it is in his 
infinite excellence that the demand of punish- 



WORK IN man's redemption. 83 

ment is grounded. He punishes for his own 
sake, because he abideth faithful, and cannot 
deny himself Because he is the righteous 
Lord, he loveth righteousness, and must ever 
hate iniquity. I venture to say, that, with the 
knowledge which God has already revealed to 
us respecting punishment, no knowledge of par- 
don would be possible except through some new 
revelation from him. This revelation he could 
doubtless make through his spiritual communi- 
cations directly to each soul, just as he can 
reveal the sunlight through the twilight of the 
morning, before the sun has appeared ; but, if it 
shall be clear and full and unmistakable, it will * 
be given in a sensible form, like the full rising of 
the sun, to which all men can appeal, and in 
which the simplest and the feeblest understand- 
ing, alike with the strongest, may find inspira- 
tion and hope. I believe you will agree with 
me in this, and that here is the basis of the sen- 
timent so universal, that men need a revelation 
from God which their senses can cognize. More- 
over, if God shall make known to us a way of 
pardon, it must be seen to be reasonable in our 
eyes as well as in his ; otherwise, we could not 
believe it to be true. And as the reason satis- 
factory to the Divine Mind can be nought other 
than God himself ; as God must find in himself 



84 LECTUEE IV. — l^EED OF A DIVINE 

alone his only and all-sufficient reason for par- 
don, — so, if pardon shall be revealed to man, the 
reason for it must be seen to be wholly divine. 
It must be altogether a divine gift. To rest it, 
in any degree, upon any thing human or finite, 
would be unreasonable. To suppose that par- 
don is possible, when we see that punishment is 
divine, would be a mockery of God, and tantal- 
izing to man, unless we can see that the reason 
for pardon is also and only divine. Whether 
pardon is possible or not, we can easily see that 
our repentance cannot purchase it, and that the 
hopes which ground it upon any work or merit 
of man must be illusive. 

The ground of pardon must be thus wholly 
in God; and, if it exist, it must be perfectly con- 
sistent with God's eternal right of punishment. 
But that these two can consist together is at 
first view inconceivable to man ; they seem in 
exact contradiction. How can God pardon, 
unless he gives up his right to punish ? and how 
can he give up a right which is itself eternal 
and divine, and still be God ? Oh, question of 
all questions this ! Men, in their perishing need, 
have sought for an answer of hope, but have 
found only despair. Superficial souls may hide 
their convictions, and banish their fears, by 
superficial observances, by their own repentance 



WORK m man's redemption. 85 

and offerings of devotion ; but over thoughtful 
minds, who recognize the futility of any thing 
the human or the finite can do, and to whom 
no evidence of a divine work in their behalf 
appears, there settles a darkness as impenetra- 
ble as it is terrible. 

But what is impossible to man is possible with 
God. In the Christian scheme of redemption 
the all-suf&cient answer appears. Differing from 
all other answers, here God is represented as 
himself redeeming man from the punishment 
of sin. 

The punishment is not set aside without a rea- 
son, without an all-sufficient reason ; for God him- 
self appears, and offers himself, in his all-perfect 
work, as the justifying reason for it. The Eternal 
Reason or Word, which was in the beginning 
with God, and which was God, became flesh, and 
dwelt among men. He enters the nature which 
had sinned. He becomes a living event in the 
history of the fallen race. He is a true man, and 
reveals the original capabilities of human nature 
in all their perfection. He is among men, and 
brings to light, by his witnessing presence, their 
infirmity and guilt. But he is God with men, 
truly human and truly divine. In him dwelt 
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. This 
fulness he sought to give to needy souls. He 



86 LECTURE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

humbled himself that he might exalt them. He 
who was rich became poor, that we, through his 
poverty, might become rich. He became obe- 
dient unto death, even the death of the cross, 
that he might save us from the curse of our dis- , 
obedience, and procure for us eternal life. The 
obedience was freely rendered. The life which 
he offered was altogether his own. '' No man 
taketh it from me," he says ; " but I lay it down of 
myself I have power to lay it down, and I have 
power to take it again." Was the law of love 
ever glorified as in the perfect obedience of this 
perfect man, in his life and death of love ? What 
an attractive power in this obedience ! what a 
mighty influence it is fitted to have upon selfish 
hearts, wherever it could be made known, — 
drawing them from their selfishness to love ! 

But what has this to do with pardon? Ref- 
ormation of life will not remove the defilement 
of guilt already incurred. We need something 
more than new incentives to obedience, however 
desirable these may be. Moreover these, how- 
ever mighty, would be powerless to move us to 
action, unless there were something also to in- 
spire us with the hope of pardon. Does the per- 
fect obedience of Jesus Christ give us any such 
hope ? Does the offering of his life in the sacri- 
fice of a perfect self-abnegation, wherein he 



WORK m mak's eedemption. 87 

fulfilled the divinest requirement, furnisli any 
ground for pardon? 

Remember that Jesus Christ, as truly man as 
any one of us, bone of our bone and flesh of our 
flesh, is also truly God over all, blessed forever, 
the eternal Creator and Ruler of all things. It 
is a divine obedience, therefore, which we have to 
contemplate here. He who bec3.me thus obedi- 
ent to the perfect law is himself the almighty 
Sovereign. It was his right to reign. It be- 
hooved him to be Lawgiver and Lord through all 
his worlds. In the perfection of his sovereignty 
over his creatures was their perfection and bless- 
edness. The river of the water of their life could 
proceed, clear as crystal, only from his throne. 
When he becomes a subject, therefore, though it 
is a human obedience which is rendered, it is also 
infinitely more than this. It has a divine signifi- 
cance and worth and glory. It possesses a merit 
thus which no finite obedience could possess. In 
the offering of Jesus Christ, in completest self- 
abnegation, there is revealed to us a divine offer- 
ing, a divine sacrifice, which divine justice may 
not have required, but which divine love is all 
able to accomplish. Justice may not have re- 
quired it, but what may not it require of justice ? 
When we say that the offering is divine, have we 
any other terms wherein to measure its merit 



88 LECTURE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

than to say that it is exhaust! ess? And when 
the Son of God, having finished his work, and 
come off as a conqueror, and more than a con- 
queror, demands the pardon of sin, — demands 
it of justice, — is this any thing more than justice 
must grant ? In the immeasurable merits of his 
priceless obedience and self-sacrifice, God can be 
just, and yet justify the believer in Jesus. For 
his own sake thus he pardons, even as it is for 
his own sake he punishes. In the inscrutable 
mystery of his wisdom, and in the infinite all- 
sufficiency of his love, he has revealed to us a 
divine harmony of grace and justice, wherein 
mercy and truth have met together, and right- 
eousness and peace have kissed each other. 

You ask me, gentlemen, for the proof of all 
this, — a proper inquiry ; but before answering it, 
let me remind you, that, if it is true, it is not only 
an all-perfect provision for pardon, but it is the 
only perfect provision that has ever been pro- 
posed. Examine other religions, and, at the best, 
they offer only some finite ground as the reason 
of pardon. At the best, it is only the merits of 
men which they propose as the means of obtain- 
ing the divine favor. If they ever present us, 
as some of them do, with theories and histories 
of divine incarnations, they never hold up these 
as the meritorious ground of pardon. Repent- 



WOEK IN man's redemption. 89 

ance, sacrifices, good works of men, are all that 
any of these religions offer as the object of faith 
or the ground of hope ; but for the sake of 
these, can it be expected that God will remit 
punishment and pardon sin ?^ What are these, at 
the best, when judged by infinite righteousness? 
At the best, do they reach farther than duty ? 
Are they more than ought to be done ? What 
reason, therefore, can they offer why failures in 
duty should be forgiven ? There is not one of 
these systems of religion which will bear the 
scrutiny of an honest thought. There is not a 
believer in one of them who does not convict 
himself of a groundless faith the moment it is 
examined. But whether Christianity be actually 
true or not, you must acknowledge that its pro- 
vision of pardon is ideally perfect ; its ground 
for forgiving sin accords with perfect righteous- 
ness; it meets all the requirements of justice, 
and all the needs of man; and, among all the 
religions of the world, it is the only one not 
defective on both these points. 

That the Christian religion is actually true, as 
well as ideally perfect, has one grand proof 
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead 
is the irrefragable confirmation of all that he 
taught and suffered. He came as a Saviour. • 
The Son of man is come, he said, to seek and to 

8* 



90 LECTUEE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

save that whicL. was lost. He had declared that 
the life which he offered up was given as a ran- 
som or redemption for men (Matt. xx. 28). 
Through the shedding of his blood, he had 
taught his disciples, was to come the remission 
of sins (Matt. xxvi. 28). He had claimed, that, 
to himself, belonged upon earth the power to 
forgive sin, a power acknowledged as belonging 
to God alone (Luke v. 20-26). He had repeat- 
edly declared that eternal life for men came 
through him, and through him alone (John iii. 
4-18; V. 21-24; vi, 40-47). These claims are 
attested and made valid for men everywhere, in 
all ages, through his resurrection from the dead. 
If he actually died upon the cross, and was 
buried, and rose again from the tomb, as is 
claimed, this is a divine seal upon his work, 
which manifests its all-sufficiency in the divine 
eye, and which enables it to be proclaimed as 
glad-tidings of great joy to all people. The 
central evidence of the Christian system is pre- 
cisely here. Wise as are the words of Christ, 
mighty 'as are his works, grand as his hfe seems, 
and sublime as was his death, the all-sufficient 
evidence that he is the true Redeemer and Life 
of the world, through whom and through whom 
alone forgiveness of sins can be obtained, fails 
without his resurrection. The ultimate proof of 



WOEK IN man's bedemption. 91 

it all hinges here. This is the central and cardi- 
nal doctrine of the Christian faith, without which 
there is no such faith. If Christ be not risen, 
said Paul, then is our preaching vain (1 Cor. xv.). 
I cease, gentlemen, all my solicitations that you 
accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, unless 
it be literally true that he rose from the dead ; 
but if this be true, then the Christian religion 
stands before you, not at all as a suppliant, im- 
ploring your assent, but as a sovereign which 
commands the allegiance of the world, and must 
compel it also. 

The historical evidence for this fact is singu- 
larly convincing. I believe that any one who 
studies it for the first time will be surprised at its 
fulness and clearness. The disciples of Christ 
were not expecting any such event. What he 
had told them beforehand respecting his death 
and resurrection they had either imperfectly un- 
derstood, or had wholly perverted. They were 
saturated with the prevailing Jewish notion, that 
the Messiah, or Christ, when he came, should be 
a temporal prince, actually and visibly restoring 
the kingdom of David. They were not pre- 
pared for his death, much less for his resurrec- 
tion. The first announcement that he had 
actually risen seemed like an idle tale to the 
disciples, and they believed it not (Luke xxiv. 



92 LECTUBE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

11). After he had really appeared to them, and 
they with united voice had told the fact to one 
of their number not present at the time, so in- 
credulous was he, that he declared he could not 
believe it without the most indubitable proof to 
his own senses. '^ Except I shall see in his hands 
the print of the nails, and put my finger into the 
print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his 
side, I will not believe" (John xx. 25). These 
doubts of the disciples are very significant to us. 
They prevent our doubts. They show us that 
the important fact we are summoned to believe 
was sufficiently scrutinized by those most compe- 
tent to judge of its truth. 

Notwithstanding these obstinate doubts, the 
disciples all became convinced. They received 
such palpable proof that their Master had risen 
from the dead, that every doubt was dispelled. 
Then followed a most wonderful revolution in 
their views respecting him, and in the whole 
procedure of their life. Few and feeble as they 
were, and cast down through his death, they re- 
ceived in the forty days after his death a hope 
and courage and strength with which they faced 
the world, whose submission they demanded to 
their Lord. They rose now to a new view of 
his kingdom. They entered into the meaning 
of his death. They saw the fulness and power 



WOEK IK man's eedemptiok, 93 

and glory of his redemption ; and they preached 
repentance, and remission of sins through his 
name. This revolution in their thoughts and life 
they ascribe to the evidence they had received 
of Christ's resurrection, through which they de- 
clare they do not hesitate to preach him as the 
Saviour of the world (Acts ii. 24-32, iii., 
iv. 8-13, X., xiii. ; Rom. x. 9 ; 1 Cor. xv. 5- 
20; 1 Pet i. 21). 

Now, that the disciples can have been mis- 
taken respecting so palpable a fact is both 
incredible and inconceivable. They knew well 
the personal appearance of Jesus, and could not 
have been imposed upon by any false represen- 
tations, even if we could conceive of such having 
been attempted. Nothing surely could have 
made them believe that they had seen and felt 
and handled the living body of their Master after 
his death ; that they had heard his voice, and 
that he had eaten before them, to convince them 
that they saw not a mere shadowy representation 
of him; and that these appearances had been 
given at different times to numbers of men and 
women, singly and collectively, — unless there 
was a reality in the resurrection which put it be- 
yond a doubt. They were not easily convinced, 
as we have seen; and, if they really believed 
what they so unanimously came to afl&rm, it can 



94 LECTUEE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINB 

only have been because tlieir affirmations were 
true. 

Did they not believe it ? They could not have 
been deceived themselves ; but did they try to 
deceive the world ? This is equally incredible. 
For what motive to such a course ? What hope 
could they have of success ? Was not the sepul- 
chre in which the dead body of Jesus was laid, 
sealed, and a Roman guard set to watch it ? and 
could not the story of his resurrection be falsified 
in a moment if it was not true ? Were not the 
Jews who had plotted his death, and the Romans 
who had permitted it, ready enough to dispute 
such a fact unless it had been indisputable ? But 
the disciples declare it everywhere. They make 
it the basis of their preaching. They hold it up 
as the irrefutable evidence of their doctrine, in 
the very city where the event is declared to 
have taken place, and among the people who 
had every opportunity to test the fact, and from 
whom innumerable witnesses could have proved 
its falsity if it had not been true. And the 
proof is clear beyond all denial, that the resur- 
rection of Christ was believed in Jerusalem 
itself, by thousands who had seen his crucifixion, 
and who, by the irresistible evidence of his 
resurrection, were led to believe in him as their 
divine Lord and only Saviour. 



WOKK IN man's eedemption. 95 

Moreover, the disciples gave every evidence 
of being credible men. They speak soberly, as 
of the things Avhich they have both seen and 
heard. They are not men likely to be led away 
by their fancies. They are plain, matter-of-fact, 
though so earnest men. They give every ap- 
pearance of truthfulness. They are evidently seek- 
ing no selfish end. Their whole life, after they 
have begun to preach the resurrection, shows the 
highest forgetfulness of self, and an absorbing de- 
votion to the good of others. When Christ was 
apprehended they were terror-stricken, and they 
all forsook him and fled. When he was put to 
death they were dismayed. But there was never 
a bolder set of men than these same timid 
disciples, after they began to speak of their 
Master's resurrection. In defence of this doc- 
trine they met opposition and persecution, and 
faced death itself without shrinking. They laid 
down their lives, rather than give up the doctrine 
which they preached. There is no explanation 
of their conduct unless their doctrine was true. 

The historical truth of the resurrection of 
Christ has never been impugned. The witnesses 
for it are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently 
credible to compel any candid assent. It fal- 
sifies every element of human nature, and con- 
tradicts every principle of historical criticism, 



96 LECTUEE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

to suppose that the disciples were either deceiv- 
ers or deceived. The statements and the con- 
duct of these men render each of these supposi- 
tions equally impossible. The doctrine which 
they taught must be true ; and therefore God's 
seal is set to the great truth of Christ's redemp- 
tion, who was truly delivered for our offences, 
and raised again for our justification, and who 
is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours 
only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 

Gentlemen, there can be but* one living and 
true God, the Creator and Ruler of all things. 
It is against him that the whole human family 
have sinned. By his original communications 
to every soul, he has revealed the fact of sin 
and of punishment. All races of men, in every 
age, bear true and terrible witness' to this. If, 
in these original communications, there is also 
seen any way of relief from sin and its just 
doom, you will acknowledge, that, at the best, the 
vision is exceedingly faint, and the wide-reaching 
conviction that it needs to be enlarged by an ad- 
ditional revelation testifies to its inadequacy ; but 
if in any soul there be any sense, however faint, 
that God can forgive sin, it is clear that he can 
do this only for his own sake. The reason for 
forgiveness must be satisfactory to himself, and 
can be thus only himself. The way of pardon 



WORK IN man's redemption. 97 

can be only tlie one which he provides; and 
this implies that there can be only one such way. 
God's method must be the best, and thus, single. 
If he forgives and purifies in any case, it must 
be for the same reason that he would in every 
case. Diversities of religion, different ways of 
pardon and of a divine fellowship, are intrinsi- 
cally impossible. It is as absurd to suppose 
that there can be different religions, equally 
valid, as that there could be different sciences 
equally true. Science, so far as it relates to the 
same facts, is single. To suppose that different 
people have different sciences of the same ob- 
jects is to suppose that some of them at least 
ai'e holding to sciences falsely so called. What 
would you say of me if I should hold up a sys- 
tem of mathematics as suitable for me and my 
race, but having no significance for you ? Would 
you not tell me that any science is worthless for 
one unless it be valid for all ? And what shall 
I say of you if you turn aside from Christianity 
as being well enough for Christialis, while you 
cling to your Hinduism as the religion sepa- 
rately adapted to you ? Does not the fact that 
you talk of this religion as yours, and as sepa- 
rately adapted to the Hindus, show that it- is 
not adapted even to yourselves, and that you 
yourselves have no profound conviction of its 

9 



98 LECTUEE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 

truth. ? You make no effort to propagate your 
faitli. You send no missionaries abroad. You 
do not believe that your religion has any appli- 
cation to any other portion of the human family 
than your own. Therefore, I say, you have no 
right to believe that it has any beneficent appli- 
cation to yourselves; and, in your heart of hearts, 
you do not and can not believe it. The very fact, 
that, as a religion, it is not fitted for all, proves 
that it is not fitted for any. I call upon you to 
accept a religion which has no narrow claims. 
The Christian religion does not admit for itself 
any limited application. It demands universal 
acceptance. It does not allow that its method 
of salvation is one out of a number from which 
men may safely choose. It claims to be the only 
way. It holds itself up unfalteringly as the re- 
ligion for every nation and every soul. Its ideal 
position is perfect. It offers pardon, not upon 
partial or finite grounds, but through a provision 
of which God himself is the all-sufficient author 
and finisher. That the perfect obedience of the 
Son of God to the broken law, accomplished in 
the incarnation and life and death of Jesus 
Christ, opens a way for pardon acceptable to 
God, is put beyond a question through Christ's 
resurrection from the dead. Here is a religion, 
therefore, which has all the elements of univer- 



WOEK IK man's eedemption. 99 

sality and perpetuity. Do you wonder that it 
does not decay, nor grow old nor weak nor 
weary? Do you wonder that it goes on, steadily 
subduing the nations? Do you wonder that 
you are called upon to accept this faith, and 
yield your wills to Jesus Christ as your Lord 
and Saviour? 



MIEAOLES. 



I TAKE up this book wliicli we call the Bible; 
and, whether or not I acknowledge its truth, I must 
at least confess its power. No other book has 
moved the world as this has done. I inquire into 
the secret of this, to discover which I am obliged 
to open the book to see what it contains ; and I 
find in it really but one thought, — a thought, 
indeed, of incomparable grandeur and of innu- 
merable relations, but which, itself, is as single 
as it is sublime. All through the Bible, I dis- 
cover only what is involved in the great thought 
of redemption. Man's need of redemption, and 
God's copious provision for it, furnish the won- 
derful theme of this wonderful book. 

Somehow or other, the Bible has convinced 
men that this thought is true ; and it cannot be 
doubted that here is the secret of its otherwise 
inexplicable power. Men have been persuaded 
that an all-sufficient redemption has been freely 

100 



MIRACLES. 101 

provided by a sovereign and gracious act of God 
himself; and the book which contains this an- 
nouncement, and furnishes the evidence of its 
truth, is, therefore, glad tidings of great joy unto 
all people who receive it. Men prize it, and em- 
brace it, and mould their lives according to its 
precepts, because convinced that its story of 
redeeming love is true. 

What has wrought this conviction ? There 
are two ways in which we become convinced of 
the truth of any thing, and only two. In one, 
our minds behold the truth in its own light. 
The truth is then self-evident, and convinces us 
by the simple manifestation of itself. We ex- 
press this conviction when we say that we know 
a statement to be true. Knowledge is this im- 
mediate beholding of the truth ; and, when we 
profess it, we rest in it with an unshaken con- 
viction. 

But there are many truths of which we are 
convinced, but which we do not thus immediate- 
ly see, and which we cannot be thus said to know. 
We are convinced that there is such a city as 
Peking, though we perhaps never saw it ; we 
have no doubt that water is composed of oxygen 
and hydrogen, though quite likely we never 
made the experiment, and saw the truth for our- 
selves; we are confident that the differential 

9* 



102 MIRACLES. 

calculus has solved vast and intricate questions 
in science, and that the method of quaternions 
is able to solve many more, though very possi- 
bly not one of these problems has ever been 
worked out by ourselves. These truths we ac- 
cept, not because we behold them in their own 
light, but because they are affirmed by the com- 
petent testimony of those who have thus beheld 
them. We express this conviction when we say 
that we believe a statement to be true. 

Knowledge and belief do not differ in that 
the one is a stronger conviction than the other. 
The conviction may be just as strong of the truth 
we believe as of that which we know. We may 
be no less certain of the existence of Peking, 
which we, perhaps, never saw, than we are of 
the existence of Boston, which we, perhaps, see 
every day. The difference does not relate at all 
to the strength of the conviction, but wholly to 
the kind of evidence on which the conviction 
rests. In knowledge, this evidence is the light 
of the truth itself as it becomes directly disclosed 
to the mind ; in belief, the evidence is the testi- 
mony of another. 

A belief may become changed into knowl- 
edge. I may believe certain truths of science 
because scientific men relate them, and I may 
come to know these same truths through my 



MIRACLES. 103 

own experiment or demonstration. The human 
mind has ever an impulse to know that in which 
it has beheved. The belief is the stepping- 
stone and the constant stimulus to the increasing 
knowledge. 

In like manner, the knowledge becomes the 
ground-work of a growing faith. The finite 
mind can never know all things. Though the 
sphere of its knowledge be constantly enlarging, 
the sphere of the unknown appears to grow in 
an equal degree ; as, with a candle in a dark 
place, the farther the light reaches, the greater 
the surrounding darkness seems. There will be 
always, therefore, something for us to believe. 
We shall always need a voice to come to us out 
of the darkness, and tell us of the unknown. 

Knowledge and belief may be indefinitely 
blended ; but they are the basis of all our con- 
victions. When, therefore, the Bible convinces 
us of its truth, it must be, either because the 
truth is known by us in its own light, or because 
we believe it on the testimony which declares it. 
Now, as a matter of fact, we find that the con- 
viction which the Bible does induce is a belief 
in its truth. It does not come before us, like a 
book of geometry, with its theorems all demon- 
strated, so that every principle which it utters 
may be revealed in its own light to our knowl- 



104 MIBACLES. 

edge ; but it is chiefly a system of faith. It ap- 
peals to our belief • Its prime evidence is the 
testimony of another. 

But what sort of testimony is necessary to 
secure our belief? When one affirms to us a 
statement which is beyond our knowledge, we 
believe it just as far, and just as strongly, as 
we know that he who affirms it is too wise to 
be mistaken, and too honest to deceive. If we 
know the perfect wisdom and perfect truthful- 
ness of a person, we believe his word with as 
strong a conviction as that of any knowledge. 
The belief always implies some sort of knowledge 
to rest upon, — some acquaintance with the truth 
declared, or with him by whom it is declared; 
but it conveys to us truths which our knowledge 
at the time when we received them has no means 
of reaching. 

Now, the knowledge of God is the primal and 
constant knowledge of any soul. '' To know 
God," says Jacobi, '' and to possess reason, are 
one and the same thing, — just as not to know 
God, and be a brute, are the same thing." This 
knowledge may be vague and indefinite and ob- 
scure in many instances ; yet, in every instance, 
is it the original possession and inalienable sub- 
stance of the human mind: so that, as Cicero 
says, '' There is no one of all men so savage, that 



I 



MIRACLES. 105 

his mind is not tinctured by it ; " and, as the Jew 
Philo says, '' He who possesses this knowledge is 
a man, and he who is destitute of it is no man."" 

We know that God is, and that he is all-wise, 
and cannot lie ; and the Bible assumes this 
knowledge, and rests all its statements upon it, 
expecting us to receive them because they come 
from God, whom we know to be so wise that he 
cannot be mistaken, and so truthful that he will 
never deceive. Of course, if this foundation is 
secure, whatever is built upon it must surely 
stand. If we can only be convinced that God 
has spoken to us, we can no more doubt the 
word thus spoken than could the earth have 
maintained its formlessness and darkness when 
the Spirit of God brooded over the abyss, and 
God said, '^ Let there be light." 

The whole question, therefore, hinges exactly 
here : What is the evidence that God has 
spoken ? How shall we be convinced that the 
Bible is his word? The question is not, " How 
shall God flash conviction upon the mind by 
some self-evidencing statement ? " but, '^ How 
shall he reveal his own testimony to the truth ? 
Manifestly, this can only be through some 
directly spiritual and internal communication, or 
through some outward and sensible disclosure of 
God's presence. But a communication wholly 



106 



MIRACLES. 



internal, while it might be sufficient for the per- 
son to whom it is immediately given, would 
have no power to convince another, and would 
be liable to the same difficulties as attach to a 
conviction secured through external and sensible 
means. These, therefore, must be the methods 
employed. If God shall ever seek to convince 
us of the truth by his testimony to it, he will 
manifest his testimony in a way which the bodily 
senses can perceive. But this is only to say that 
he will do it by miracles ; for a miracle is noth- 
ing more nor less than a manifestation, through 
the senses, of God's testimony to the truth. A 
miracle is a sensible event, wrought by God in 
attestation of the truth. It, therefore, must 
occur in Nature, and require for its production 
that which Nature does not possess. It must 
occur in Nature, otherwise it would not be 
apprehensible to our senses ; and it must, at the 
same time, be beyond the power of Nature to 
produce, .otherwise it would not disclose an 
agency which belongs to the Author of Nature 
alone. A miracle is not simply an extraordinary 
event, like an eclipse or an earthquake, which, 
however unfrequent, occurs through the regular 
action of the same forces that produce the ordi- 
nary events in Nature, and which might be fore- 
known by one acquainted with its cause ; but it 



MIRACLES. 107 

is an event wliicli Nature, by its own action, 
never would have brought forth, and for which 
the power of God alone is adequate. It is no 
new birth from Nature's teeming womb, but a 
new beginning, which rises at once from an 
almighty fiat. It is not a development, but a 
creation. It is an absolutely new force intro- 
duced into Nature, by which Nature is checked 
and changed. The simplest definition we can 
give, therefore, of a miracle, is a counteraction 
of Nature by the Author of Nature. 

Whether such counteractions have ever been 
wrought ; whether this vast and intricate mech- 
anism, the exquisite adjustments and delicate 
interdependence of all whose parts fill us with 
unceasing wonder, has ever been changed in 
any of its workings by a power outside itself, — 
is the grave and difficult question we must next 
consider. 

In seeking the answer to this inquiry, let us 
ask, in the first place, whether there can be a 
sufficient occasion for such an interference with 
Nature as a miracle implies. Is such an inter- 
ference needed to give us any further knowl- 
edge of God than Nature discloses? Are not 
the invisible things of him, from the creation of 
the world, clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, so that men are without 



108 MIRACLES. 

excuse ? and do we need any tiling more ? We 
need nothing more, certainly, to convince us of 
our obligation and responsibility ; for such a 
conviction all men possess. But, in the actual 
condition of human nature, what a terrible con- 
viction this is ! To know that we ought to do 
right, and that we have done wrong, and that 
we are responsible for this to a tribunal of infi- 
nite justice, is a knowledge in which the human 
soul has found an irrepressible and yet unutter- 
able agony. If we fancy that this is the result 
of some dreadful delusion, and would disappear 
if all men could only come to see that there is 
no such thing as unmixed ill, and that ^'evil is 
only good in the making ; " and that their so- 
called sin is only a phase of thfeir imperfect de- 
velopment, which advancing thought and culture 
are sufficient to remove, — we must at least ad- 
mit that such a fancy contradicts the deepest and 
most universal convictions of mankind, which we 
may well be hopeless of attempting in any such 
way to eradicate. The conviction of sin as a 
dark and terrible reality occupies a place in the 
a^ctual human experience, of which it refuses to 
be dispossessed by any process of argument. 
The difference between suffering wrong and do- 
ing wrong, between the regret for what another 
has done to us and the remorse for what we our- 



I 



MIRACLES. 109 

selves have done, is a difFerence wliicli no dia- 
lectics can make to disappear, and which the 
common consciousness of mankind recognizes as 
a gulf broad and impassable forever. No sub- 
tle discriminations nor attempted subterfuges 
have long cloaked or crowded down this convic- 
tion; but it has disclosed itself, through every 
contrivance to conceal it, as the deepest source 
of woe which the human soul possesses. No 
torture of the rack or the stake has equalled 
the agony which men have actually experienced 
from the consciousness of sin. 

This suffering can only be removed by removing 
the sin in which it has its source. But how is this 
possible ? To stop sinning causes neither the sin 
nor the suffering to cease. It is not simply a the- 
ory of human nature which justifies this assertion, 
but the actual facts of human experience, — the 
darkest, saddest, and yet the most undeniable 
facts of our history. It is a simple truth of com- 
mon experience, that a soul conscious of its 
tra.nsgressions does not lose that consciousness 
by any act of subsequent obedience. The con- 
sciousness of sin, however vaguely it may appear 
in some minds, always discloses a violated divine 
authority, whose requirements of justice and ret- 
ribution the understanding and the will can 
neither stifle nor satisfy. If there be any relief 

10 



110 



MIEACLES. 



from the misery of sin, it can only come from 
this violated authority itself; but no knowledge 
of God which the soul originally possesses, nor 
any which Nature can furnish, is sufficient to 
suggest even the possibility of any such relief 
Nature adds to that of the human conscience 
her own testimony of the heinousness of sin. 
She tells us of the righteousness of punishment, 
and the inexorableness of law ; but, in the 
myriad voices with which she speaks of duty 
and of God, there is no intimation of forgive- 
ness or of love. That God is good, in the sense 
of desiring the happiness of his creatures, Nature 
abundantly discloses: but that he can do more 
than confer upon them the benefits of creation, 
satisfying one created object by another ; that 
he has a heart which pities, and is willing to 
pardon, and which yearns to communicate himself 
— his uncreated and divine fulness — to needy 
souls, the heavens which declare his glory, and 
the firmament which showeth his handiwork, the 
day unto day which utter eth speech, and the 
night unto night which showeth knowledge of 
him, nowhere disclose. If God's mercy to sin- 
ners be a truth, it is a truth, not of Nature, but 
of a supernatural world ; and it reaches heights 
of glory in the supernatural which the human 
intellect has, of itself, no power to ascend. 



MIEACLES. Ill 

And the evidence of this, if the proof were 
wanting, is found in the fact, that the soul, with 
no other instruction than itself or Nature can 
furnish, has never attained such knowledge. In 
all the records of paganism, while the divine 
power and wisdom and justice, and even benefi- 
cence, are clearly declared, no mention is made 
of the divine love. In the idolatrous sacrifices, 
in the penances and prayers, of the heathen, 
there is doubtless indicated some vague idea of 
propitiation, — some undefined conviction, that, 
in some such way, God may be approached and 
pleased. But that God is a being who ap- 
proaches us before we make any attempt to 
draw nigh unto him ; that he regards us in 
mercy because of his love, and not for the sake 
of our good deeds ; that he is a God who par- 
doneth iniquity because he delighteth in mercy, 
— would seem to be a thought which the natural 
heart, uninstructed by any special divine revela- 
tion, is unable to attain. 

I confess, therefore, to a kind of surprise, when 
I find certain scholars and cultivated writers of 
our own time and neighborhood classifying the 
Bible with the Koran, and the Vedas, and the 
Zendavesta, and the Five Volumes, to Avhich 
Confucius and the Chinese appeal. Such a clas- 
sification, considered simply as a matter of liter- 



112 MIRACLES. 

aiy criticism, is very superficial, and is creditable 
neither to the discrimination nor the culture of 
the writers who make it. The Bible, certainly, 
stands alone, and immeasurably distant from all 
other books, in this one grand characteristic, — 
that its Teligion is the religion where God is 
yearning and seeking after man, and where man 
is invited and entrea^ted and commanded to draw 
nigh unto God, solely on the ground that God 
has already come nigh unto man. That God 
takes the first step in religion, that he begins 
the work of human restoration and deliverance, 
nowhere appears till the Christian Scriptures 
have announced it. What grand and awful 
visions of divine justice did the old Greek dram- 
atists behold! What terrors of righteousness 
and retribution have been heard, in cries of an- 
guish or groans of despair, all over the v\^orld ! 
But who has known that God is gracious, that 
he can forgive sin, that he loves man, until the 
Bible has first made the blessed announce- 
ment ? 

But if this thought, which is the single and 
peculiar theme of the Bible, be true, can any 
thing be so important to man as its communica- 
tion in a manner which shall show its truth to be 
indisputable ? And if Nature cannot declare it, 
and the human mind alone cannot reach it, how 



MIRACLES. 113 

is this communication possible, unless directly 
announced by God himself? And how shall this 
announcement be proved to be from God, unless 
he shall irrefutably manifest himself in connec- 
tion with the utterance ? And how can this 
manifestation be, except through that miracu- 
lous interference with Nature already described? 
If God's mercy to sinners be true, and if this 
truth shall ever be declared to those who are 
perishing, for lack of it, we may expect the dec- 
laration through a miracle. 

And now we are to notice, that, while the 
Bible announces this great doctrine of redemp- 
tion as true, declaring that God has provided a 
perfect remedy for sin, it also claims to be a 
miraculous revelation. It professes to prove the 
doctrine by miracles which furnish God's testi- 
mony to its truth. In both the Old Testament 
and the New, miracles are continually adduced 
as a motive for faith. The Lord accompanied 
the call of Moses to deliver his people with a 
miracle ; and, when the faith of the chosen leader 
was thus elicited and confirmed, miracles were 
wrought, whose express design, as stated by the 
Lord himself, was to attest to the children of Is- 
rael the divine commission with- which Moses was 
furnished: '' That they may believe that the Lord 
God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the 

10* 



114 



MIEACLES. 



God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath ap- 
peared unto thee." ^ 

Miracles were still further wrought, not only 
to establish the faith of the Israelites, but to con- 
vince the Egyptians themselves: '' And the Egyp- 
tians shall know that I am the Lord, when I 
stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring 
out the children of Israel from among them." f 

After the Israelites had been delivered by 
miracles, and their faith still staggered, miracles 
were continued for its confirmation. In an- 
nouncing these before they took place, Moses 
says, '' Then ye shall know that the Lord hath 
brought you out from the land of Egypt." J 

When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled, a 
signal miracle was wrought in special attestation 
of the divine commission of Moses. The design 
of the miracle Moses declares, when he says, 
'' Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent 
me to do all these works ; for I have not done 
them of mine own mind." § 

When Moses had died, miracles bore witness 
to the divine authority with which Joshua was 
invested: ^^ And the Lord said unto Joshua, This 
day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of 



* Exod. iv. 5 ; cf. 8, 9. t Exod. vii. 5 ; cf. ib. ix. 29, and xi. 7, 

X Exod. xvi. 6 ; cf. 7, 8, 12. § Num. xvi. 8. 



MIRACLES. 115 

all Israel, that they may know, that as I was with 
Moses, so I will be with thee."^ 

When the people of Israel had forsaken the 
worship of Jehovah, and had gone after the 
priests of Baal, they were brought back to their 
former faith by a miracle: ^'The God that an- 
swer eth by fire," said Elijah upon Mount Car- 
mel, ''let him be Grod." " Then the fire of the 
Lord fell, and consumed the burnt-sacrifice, and 
the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and 
licked up the water that was in the trench. And 
when all the people saw it they fell upon their 
faces ; and they said, The Lord he is the God, 
the Lord he is the God." f 

A prime motive of the miracles of Christ was 
to convince those who beheld them of his divine 
authority. When John sent two of his disciples 
to Christ to say unto him, '' Art thou he that 
should come, or do we look for another? Jesus 
answered, and said unto them. Go and show 
John again those things which ye do hear and 
see, — the blind receive their sight, and the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, 
the dead are raised up, and the poor have the 
gospel preached to them." J Before healing the 
sick of the palsy, he says to those around, ''But 

* Josh. iii. 7 ; cf. 10-13. f 1 Kings xviii. 24, 38, 39. 

t Matt. xi. 3-5. 



116 



I^nRACLES. 



that ye may know that the Son of man hath 
power on earth to forgive sms (he saith to the 
sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and 
take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine 
house." ^^ At the raising of Lazarus, "Jesus 
lifted up his eyes, a;nd said, Father, I thank thee 
that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou 
hearest me always ; but, because of the people 
which stand by, I said it, that they may believe 
that thou hast sent me." f John bore witness unto 
the truth: but Jesus says, '' I have greater wit- 
ness than that of John ; for the works which the 
Father hath given me to j&nish, the same works 
that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father 
hath sent me." { '^ If I do not the works of my 
Father, believe me not; but if. I do, though ye 
believe not me, believe the works'; that ye may 
know and believe that the Father is in me, and I 
in him." § A recent writer says, '^ It does not 
appear that Jesus aimed to force conviction by 
miracles; " || but in simple fact, whether we take 
his own words for it, or the actual impression 
that his miracles gave, this is the very thing at 
which he was aiming. " And many of the peo- 
ple believed on him, and said. When Christ 
Cometh, will he do more miracles than these 



* Markii. 10, 11. 
§ John X. 37, 38. 



t John xi. 41, 42. J John v. 36. 

II Hedge, Reason in Religion, p. 264. 



MIRACLES. 117 

which this man hath done ? " ^ In other words, 
could the true Messiah attest his claims in any 
stronger way? "Now, when he was in Jeru- 
salem, at the passover, in the feast-day, many 
believed in his name when they saw the miracles 
which he did." f " Rabbi," said Nicodemus, '^ we 
know that thou art a teacher come from God ; for 
no man can do these miracles that thou doest, 
except God be with him." J 

The power to work miracles was given to the 
apostles ; and they exercised it also as the proof 
of their divine commission : '' They went forth 
and preached everywhere, the Lord working 
with them, and confirming the word with signs 
following;" § ''God also bearing them witness, 
both with signs and wonders, and with divers 
miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according 
to his own will." || Though the miracles may 
have ceased, they are recorded, that those who 
did not see them may also find in them a source 
of faith : ''These are written that ye might be- 
lieve that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; 
and that, believing, ye might have life through 
his name."^ 

We must admit, therefore, that the Bible 
grounds its claim to our acceptance as a revela- 

* John vii. 31. f John ii. 23. J John iii. 2. 

§ Mark xvi. 20. H Heb. ii. 4. 1[ John xx. 31. 



118 MIEACLES. 

tion from God upon its miraculons evidence. 
And as we have seen that this book stands alone 
in its theme, so we should also notice that it is 
also and equally peculiar in its miraculous claims. 
No other book claiming to be a divine revelation 
has professed to rest upon miracles. In the Ko- 
ran, Mohammed expressly affirms that God's word 
to him is, ^' Thou art commissioned to be a 
preacher only, and not a worker of miracles.""^ 
Various threats and promises are uttered in the 
Koran to unbelievers and believers ; but the mo- 
tive to faith is declared to lie exclusively in the 
revelation itself f Centuries after the death of 
Mohammed, miracles were related of him ; but 
there is no evidence that he made any pretension 
to the power of performing them. 

Many have a vague notion, that the claim to 
work miracles belongs to every rude age, and has 
been urged in support of every superstition ; but 
this is not true. Unnumbered systems of pagan- 
ism have, indeed, their unnumbered prodigies 
and signs and miracles ; but the systems do not 
depend upon these. They nowhere profess to 
do so : on the other hand, the miracles hang 
upon them. Instead of giving any support to 
the system to which they belong, they receive 

* Koran, Sura, xiii. 8. 

t Ibid., vi. 33, 34 i x. 20 ; xiii. 28, 31, 38. 



MIEACLES. 119 

all their support from it. Nowhere are they pre- 
sented as the evidence of a doctrine; but they 
come forth as the result or appendage of a doc- 
trine already believed. The Bible, however, 
does not undertake so much to prove its miracles 
by its doctrines ; but it seeks to prove its doc- 
trines, in the first place, by them. Whether or 
not this claim be valid, it is at least unique. 

We cannot, therefore, exaggerate the impor- 
tance of miracles in the Christian system. Our 
belief in that system depends, at last, upon its 
miraculous evidence. If miracles are impossible 
or incredible, or cannot be actually proved, then 
is the Christian system a delusion. The incar- 
nation of Christ, if it ever took place, was a mir- 
acle, without which our belief in redemption is 
impossible. The resurrection of Christ, if it did 
occur, was certainly a miracle of a stupendous 
sort: ''But if Christ be not risen, then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." ^ 

Thus far, I take it, neither our facts can be 
ignored, nor the deductions from them disputed. 
Here is the fact of sin, and the burden of uni- 
versal sorrow beneath which it buries men. Here 
is the need of pardon and purity, which Nature 
cannot give, which man cannot procure, which 

* 1 Cor. XV. 14. 



120 



MIRACLES. 



God alone can furnish, and whose announcement 
lie alone can make through means which shall 
irrefutably disclose his presence. Here is the 
Bible, which stands alone among all books in its 
declaration of* God's mercy, and in its adducing 
of miracles to prove that its declarations are from 
God, and are therefore true. All this is quite 
remarkable ; but the question still remains, 
whether the Bible actually gives us evidence 
enough that its miracles did occur. The oc- 
casion was momentous: the need was incalcu- 
lable. Was the occasion met? Is the need 
supplied ? 

To this inquiry the answer is, that, if the mir- 
acles did occu.r, no evidence of the fact could 
be better than that which we actually possess. 
No events in history have a wider and more un- 
equivocal testimony than have these. The mira- 
cles were not done in a. corner. There was no 
effort to conceal them. They challenged scrutiny. 
Though always wrought in proof of the one truth 
of redemption, they were done in many places, at 
many times, by different persons, to whom it was 
given to declare different points or applications 
of the great theme. They were witnessed by 
thousands. They were of such a nature, tha,t the 
beholders could not be mistaken as to whether 
they did take place. That Christ should walk 



MIRACLES. 121 

upon the water ; that he should still the storm 
by a word ; that he should ra.ise the dead even 
where the body had been buried four days ; that 
he should heal the blind, the deaf, the lame, the 
ieper, with a touch, a look, a word; that he 
should be crucified, dead, and buried, and then 
rise from the dead, and be seen for forty days by 
those who had known him most intimately before 
his death, — can be explained by no jugglery nor 
deception ; and these events must actually have 
occurred as reported, or their reporters have 
fabricated the stories, knowing them to be false. 
But why should such a fabrication be attem23ted ? 
and how was it possible to carry out the decep- 
tion ? The apostles had nothing to gain, but 
every thing to lose, by such an undertaking. To 
afl&rm these stories of their Master was to bring 
upon them also their Master's fate. Because of 
their report, the apostles did suffer obloquy, per- 
secution,' and death ; and, though they must have 
foreseen this result, they continued their declara- 
tion, ceasing not to teach and to preach that 
Jesus is the Christ, and that these mighty works 
were wrought of God through him. Does this 
look like an attempt to deceive ? Is it possible 
that in all this the apostles were only acting out 
a lie ? Surely this would be only a miracle more 
astounding than any which they declare. 
11 



122 MIEACLES. 

But more tlian this : the word of the apostles 
was believed. It was believed on the very spot 
where the miracles were declared to have taken 
place, and by thousands who could have at once 
disproved the story if it were not true. It was 
believed by their enemies. The apostles fur- 
nished proof of their statements, which no 
amount of argument or persecution could rebut. 
The recital found adherents everywhere. The 
bigoted Jew, the scornful Greek, the proud Ro- 
man, acknowledged its force. It won its way in 
the largest cities of the world. It conquered the 
chief seats of culture. It took possession of the 
high places of power. Hardly three centuries 
from the crucifixion, a disciple of Christ sat upon 
the throne of the Caesars, and the world lay at his 
feet. Now, as the miracles were continually put 
forth by the early preachers of Christianity as the 
evidence of its truth, it must have been believed 
that they occurred. But when we remember 
how manifest and how numerous and how mar- 
vellous the so-called miracles were, and how 
boldly the apostles proclaimed them, and how 
constantly they relied upon them, and that the 
numbers who participated in the scenes de- 
scribed, and who might have disproved the 
miracles if they had not occurred, must have 
exceeded the apostles by thousands to one, is it 



MIRACLES. 123 

possible tliat it was all a mistake ? This, I say 
again, would be the greatest miracle of all. 

But still further : It does not appear that any- 
one ever ventured to deny the miracles at the 
time when the apostles were declaring them as 
the reason why all the world should believe that 
Jesus is the Christ. Christianity did not meet 
with an easy reception, though it spread so rap- 
idly. It was opposed on every hand. Per- 
secution was not the only means employed for 
its overthrow. Learning and philosophy set their 
forces in array, and sought to demolish it on high 
intellectual grounds. But, in all that was said in 
opposition to it during its early history, not a 
word appears to have been uttered against the 
reality of its miracles. Every argument was 
urged which the keenest hostility could suggest ; 
but no one seems to have thought it possible to 
deny that the miracles took place. But if there 
had been, at the time, any room for the denial, 
does any one doubt that it would have been ut- 
tered ? We must remember that the apostles 
were preaching an exclusive religion. They were 
continually declaring that there is no other way 
of salvation. They set themselves against every 
form of doctrine, however venerable or dear, 
which was contrary to the name of Jesus of Naz- 
areth ; and when, in proof of their doctrine, 



124 MIRACLES. 

they hold up the miracles everywhere, and no 
one anywhere attempts to deny them, is it not 
clear that the evidence for them was felt to be 
irrefutable ? 

But there is yet a stronger point. Not only 
did the opposers of Christianity fail to deny the 
miracles ; they actually admitted them, and have 
left their testimony to the fact of their occur- 
rence: " He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," ^^ 
said the Jewish rulers, unable to deny the fact of 
the wonderful work. In like manner, Celsus and 
Hierocles, and Julian the apostate, and the Jew- 
ish rabbis in the Talmud, — all of whom wrote 
and argued even bitterly against Christianity, — 
have yet all left their acknowledgment, which 
we still possess, of the actual occurrence of these 
events, which they seek to account for by magi- 
cal arts ; which Celsus affirms Christ must have 
learned in Egypt, and by which he was able to 
.deceive great multitudes. Are we not entitled 
to say, therefore, that here is a certainty ? If any 
thing can be certain, these facts thus reported 
did occur. The great doctrine which the Bible 
proclaims, it also proves. It is not unmeaning ; 
it is no delusion ; it is the great truth of God, 
that ''he so loved the world, that he gave his 

^ Matt. ix. 34 ; Mark iii. 22; Lukexi. 15. 



MIRACLES. 125 

only -begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." "^ '^ Therefore we ought to give the more 
earnest heed to the things which we have heard, 
lest at any time we should let them slip. For if 
the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and 
every transgression and disobedience received a 
just recompense of reward, how shall we escape 
if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first 
began to be spoken by the Lord, and was con- 
firmed unto us by them that heard him, God also 
bearing them witness, both with signs and won- 
ders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the 
Holy Ghost according to his own will ? " f 

I have thus far preferred to deal with the 
question on its positive side, seeking only to 
discover and declare the exact matter of fact, 
without reference to any inquiry respecting the 
antecedent impossibility and incredibility of these 
events. If it be proved — as I claim must be 
admitted from the evidence we possess — that 
miracles have actually taken place, then they are 
both possible and credible ; and any speculative 
difficulties upon this point must be untenable. 
But, if untenable, can they not be shown to be 
thus on speculative grounds? and is this not de- 

* John iii. 16. t Heb. ii. 1-4 



126 MIEACLES. 

sirable ? I answer affirmatively, and proceed, 
without reluctance, to the task ; though, in doing 
this, I do not admit that the positive argument in 
favor af miracles needs ought further than its 
own statement, clearly apprehended, to compel 
assent. 

I do not think it necessary to dwell upon the 
objection, considerably urged in some quarters, 
that a miracle is only a physical fact ; and is there- 
fore, at the best, but an argument addressed to 
the senses, and should not be put forth as a meth- 
od of convincing the intellect. I am not sure 
that I understand this objection ; for I cannot 
look upon it from any standpoint which gives it 
force, except as I shut my eyes to the most open 
facts of every man's experience. Physical facts, 
or arguments addressed to the senses, do con- 
tinually move the intellect of every man. The 
sunrise is a physical fact ; but does it convey noth- 
ing more to the intellect of the man who beholds 
it than it does to the ox ? The ocean, the clouds, 
the stars, the human voice, the face of a friend, 
the form of a statue, the colors of a painting or a 
landscape, — ■ all these are physical facts, — argu- 
ments addressed to the senses, if one please ; but 
is there no beauty nor truth disclosed through 
them ? and could the disclosure come in any other 
way? 



1 



MIEACLES. 127 

Neither does it seem necessary to tarry with 
the objection, that a miracle indicates caprice or 
vacillation on the part of God. The miracle does 
not contradict the grand statement of Scripture, 
that the Lord is of one mind, and ''known unto 
God are all his works from the foundations of the 
world." It may have been as truly a part of 
his purpose to produce the miracle as that any 
natural event should take place ; and there is no 
more difficulty in supposing that something ab- 
solutely new should be introduced into Nature, 
than that Nature itself, as something new, should 
be introduced, when, '' in the beginning, God 
created the heavens and the earth." 

The first objection which I would more partic- 
ularly consider has been most recently uttered 
by Mr. Lecky, Y\^ho, in his somewhat confused 
" History of European Morals," deems that the 
Christian miracles had very little to do with the 
conversion of the Roman Empire, because every- 
body in those days believed in miracles, and no 
one attached any special importance to them.. 
They were affixed to the Christian doctrine as a 
matter of course, just as similar wonders accom- 
panied other recitals ; but the inductive philos- 
ophy of our time has substituted a critical spirit 
for the credulity which then prevailed, and we 
are able to see that the Christian and all other 
miracles are equally untrue. 



128 MIRACLES. 

Now, it may be that there was a readier ac- 
ceptance of the supernatural at that period than 
at the present time ; and yet, if we subject this 
notion to this same critical spirit of advanced 
modern thought, we fail to find such evidence 
of its truth as the confident assertion of it would 
seem to imply. There were sceptics then as, 
well as now. There were railers at the current 
notions of divine things, as numerous and as 
self-confident, then as now. There were the 
esoteric mysteries, not peculiar to the Greeks, 
but probably learned by them from the Egyp- 
tians, and found also with the Persian magi and 
the ancient Druids, in which the initiated were 
permitted to see the irrationalities of the common 
faith. There were Gorgias and Protagoras and 
Lucretius and Lucian, who would probably 
match any of our modern deniers of the super- 
natural ; besides Celsus and Porphyry and Hier- 
ocles and Julian, whose earnestness of convic- 
tion no modern unbeliever in Christianity will 
be likely to outdo. Porphyry and Jamblichus 
wrote lives of Pythagoras, adorned with won- 
ders as marvellous, to say the least, as any re- 
corded in the Gospels ; but the age was not 
sufficiently inclined to the supernatural to receive 
them with credit. Not every thing wonderful 
was then believed. 



MIRACLES. 129 

The trntli is, that, while the supernatural may 
be denied by some in every age, it has always 
proved itself the belief of the great mass of men, 
and is, perhaps, as prominent at the present as 
at any time. Counterfeits prove not only the 
worth, but the currency, of the genuine coin ; 
and the easy and wide spread of the so-called 
Spiritualism — not to mention other errors illus- 
trating the same — shows that very considerable 
obstacles still resist the attempt to root out the 
supernatural from the thoughts of common men. 

Now, if there was no importance attached to 
miracles in the days of the apostles, and if, as no 
one disputes, Christianity won its way in the 
face of every opposition, till it conquered a su- 
preme place in the esteem of the entire civilized 
world, then how is this latter fact to be account- 
ed for, unless we bring in — though the objec- 
tor has no thought of introducing it — some 
superior intrinsic evidence in Christianity itself, by 
which it was able to convince the world of its 
truth ? Men do not give up cherished convic- 
tions, and receive, instead, a doctrine which 
contradicts all they have previously held, for no 
cause. Nations do not chan2:e their customs 
and belief suddenly, and without any reason. 
Paganism, in the Roman Empire, did not die 
without a struggle : how came it to die at all ? 



130 MIRACLES. 

It employed botli persecution and argument to 
sustain itself: why did it not succeed? To say, 
as Mr. Lecky does, that it was because of a 
'' disintegration of old religions, and a general 
thirst for belief," shows neither the sagacious 
historian nor philosopher; for the question at 
once recurs, How did Christianity come to satis- 
fy this general thirst for belief ? and how, in this 
disintegration of old religions, was the new re- 
ligion able to stand, as though it was the word 
of God, which liveth and abideth forever ? Say 
what we will, the indisputable fact remains, that 
paganism in the Roman Empire died because it 
was supplanted : it lost its sway because a might- 
ier power wrenched the sceptre from its grasp ; 
and, if historians choose to say that miracles 
were no element of this mightier power, then they 
are bound to tell us what the elements of it act- 
ually were. What is the cause of these prodi- 
gious effects ? That the fruit is ripe, and ready to 
drop, does not explain its fall, unless there is some 
power of gravity to bring it down. That the 
nations were ready for the gospel ; that Christ 
came, as the Scripture says, '4n the fulness of 
time," — does not account for the conversion of 
the nations, unless they were convinced that he 
was the living object of their desire. That they 
were thus convinced is the indisputable fact ; 



MIEACLES. 131 

but, if his miracles had no cogency, how could this 
. have been, unless he possessed other and superior 
means of compelling assent to his claims ? The 
denial that miracles had any force in the early 
spread of Christianity obliges one to declare that 
the gospel has such interior and self-evident 
proof, that nothing is needful but its own state- 
ments to show men that it is divine. I am willing 
to leave the objector undisturbed in either of 
these positions. Augustine long ago said, '' If 
you do not believe the miracles, you must then 
believe that the world was converted without 
miracles; and this would be a miracle." 

Another phase of this same objection relates 
to the test of a miracle. If we allow that mira- 
cles are possible and credible, how shall we 
distinguish the spurious from the genuine, — the 
''lying wonders," which come "with all deceiv- 
ableness of unrighteousness in them that perish," ^ 
and the miracles which are wrought and recorded 
that we might "believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God"? If the magicians with their 
enchantments f did such things as Moses did, 
why should we not put faith in them as well as 
in Moses ? And if Simon, the Samaritan sor- 
cerer, J was a man "to whom all of the city 

* 2 Thess. ii. 10. f Exod. vii., viii. J Acts. viii. 9, 10. 



182 MIEACLES. 

gave heed, from the least unto the greatest, say- 
ing. This man is the great power of God," why 
does not he have as high claims to our regard as 
does Peter, who denounced him to his face ? 

To this there is a double answer. In the first 
place, the Bible makes a clear distinction be- 
tween the two. While it relates the wonders of 
the magicians and sorcerers, it also relates how 
these men were confounded by a mightier power 
than they could wield. Omnipotence is never at 
their control, and they are furnished with no 
divine attestation. On the other hand, they are 
continually met and controlled by what is evi- 
dently an almighty power. Still further : the Bible 
records certain events, which demanded, beyond 
dispute, God's special interposition. Such were 
those connected with the deliverance of the 
Hebrews from Egypt, by vfhich they were con- 
strained to say, '-'' The Lord brought us forth out 
of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an out- 
stretched arm, and with great terribleness, and 
with signs and wonders. "^^ On the basis of these 
miracles, Moses might appeal, as the Bible says he 
did, to the truth thus revealed, as the standard 
by which all other doctrines might be tested : '^ If 
there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer 

* Deut. xxvi. 8. 



MIRACLES. 133 

of dreams, and givetli thee a sign or a wonder, 
and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof 
he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other 
gods which thou hast not known, and let us 
serve them, thou shalt not hearken unto the 
words of that prophet or that dreamer of 
dreams." "^^ As though he had said, ^' God has 
given, by his miracles, indisputable proof that he 
is the Lord your God : let no sign nor wonder 
contradict this ; for he never can contradict him- 
self" In like manner, Paul, of whom Christ, 
after his resurrection, was seen, ''as of one born 
out of due time," f might appeal to that resur- 
rection as the all-sufficient voucher for the 
doctrines which he declared ; and might say, as 
he did to the Galatians, ''Though we, or an 
angel from heaven, preach any other gospel 
unto you than that which we have preached 
unto you, let him be accursed." J Whether we 
explain the "lying wonders" as wrought by 
jugglery, or by bringing into play forces of 
Nature w^hich only the performers knew, or by a 
supernatural power of evil which has been able 
to penetrate the natural world with its hostility 
to the good, — in no case does the Bible fail to 
furnish the means for a clear discrimination 



* Deut. xiii. 1-3. f 1 Cor. xv. 8. J Gal. i. 8. 

12 



134 MIRACLES. 

between tlie two kinds of wonders wMch it 
records. 

Another answer to this question will also 
reply to a still broader inquiry, — Why affirm 
the miracles of the Bible, and deny those related 
in other books ? Are not the healing of a blind 
man and a cripple by Vespasian, and the print 
of the nails upon St. Francis, and the wonders 
performed at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, with 
unnumbered other incidents of the same sort, 
facts for which the testimony is clear and. ample ? 
and were not these as truly miracles as any which 
the Scripture records? I do not care here to 
scrutinize the evidence on which the reports of 
th^se marvels rest ; though it must be confessed, 
that, in the great majority of the instances ad- 
duced, when the evidence is thoroughly sifted, it 
falls to the ground. But supposing we admit 
that a blind man was restored to sight, and a 
cripple to strength, by the touch and word of 
Vespasian, though Tacitus and Suetonius, the 
only authorities for the story, differ in their 
account to a degree, which, if found in the New- 
Testament writers, would assuredly be said to in- 
validate their testimony : but waiving this, and 
supposing it also to be true that the stigmata 
actually appeared upon the hands and feet of 
St. Francis, and that extraordinary cures were 



MIRACLES. 135 

wrought at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, and that 
persons have been apparently cured of the scrof- 
ula by the touch of a kmg, — the evidence of any 
thing miraculous, or of a divine interposition for 
the counteraction of Nature, is still wholly lack- 
ing. The science of anthropology discloses many 
and curious susceptibilities to bodily changes 
through mental impressions ; and, if these mar- 
vels happened, they may be illustrations of forces 
belonging wholly to Nature, and which we as yet 
but partially apprehend. I deny any thing 
miraculous in these events, and challenge the ob- 
jector for his proof; but I affirm the miraculous 
in those great events to which the Christian Scrip- 
tures appeal, and I prove the affirmation by the 
occasion, the results, and the quality of the 
events themselves. These events took place, as 
we have seen, in attestation of a doctrine of 
incalculable importance for men to know, but 
whose truth no other means were adequate to 
disclose. They have, therefore, a sufficient oc- 
casion ; while the other class has none. Give to 
these pagan and papal marvels undisputed evi- 
dence, and all the significance they claim, and 
how far does this significance reach ? — simply to 
this, that certain marvels were done which 
ended with their doing ; which had no results 
beyond the persons upon whom they were 



136 IHEACLES. 

wrought ; and which, so far as the pagan won- 
ders are concerned, did not profess to have. 
The miracles of the New Testament were not 
done simply that certain individuals might be 
saved from certain natural misfortunes ; but these 
natural misfortunes are removed in a supernat- 
ural way, in order that not only to these individ- 
uals, but to all the world, there may be taught 
the great doctrine, to wit, ''that God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not 
imputing their trespasses unto them."*^ In 
reference to these other marvels, we may say of 
them, as Origen did, "What came of them? In 
what did they issue ? Where is the society which 
has been founded by their help ? What is there 
in the world's history which they have helped 
forward, to show that they lay deep in the mind 
and counsel of God? The miracles of Moses 
issued in a Jewish polity ; those of the Lord in a 
Christian Church : whole nations were knit 
together through their help. What have your 
boasted ApoUonius or Esculapius to show as the 
fruit of theirs ? What traces have they left be- 
hind them ? " 

But the character of the events, as well as 
their occasion and results, determines their 

* 2 Cor. V. 19. 



MIEACLES. 137 

miraculous quality. Take such instances as tlie 
raising of Lazarus or the resurrection of Christ; 
and to what jugglery or deception, or force of 
Nature, however hidden, can these events be re- 
ferred? Nay, do not all our investigations of 
Nature, all the results of modern science, instead 
of pointing us to some hitherto undiscovered law 
of Nature as the sufficient cause of such events, 
put it beyond all question that no force of Nature 
could have produced them? Modern science 
has, at least, taught us that these events cannot 
have been natural events; and we are forced, 
therefore, to admit their supernatural origin, or, 
in spite of the evidence in their support, to deny 
the possibility of their occurrence. 

We come, then, to this denial, in which the 
opposition to miracles, in our time, finds its last 
stronghold. A miracle, it is said, is impossible ; 
and, therefore, no amount of testimony, nor any 
number of men who have believed it, can make 
me believe it. Nature is fixed and orderly. To 
change an atom would change all the worlds. 
To increase or diminish, in the least degree, the 
exact amount of forces now constituting the 
universe, would destroy the universe. This in- 
troduction of a new force in Nature, such as a 
miracle presupposes, is impossible. Forces of 
Nature may be dissolved, and recombined ; but 

12* 



138 MIEACLES. 

always their exact equivalence will remain. 
Nothing new can be created, and nothhig old 
destroyed. Moreover, says the objector to the 
Christian Theist, you prove the existence of your 
Deity by an appeal to the orderly arrangement 
of Nature ; but you can only prove your miracle 
by denying this same orderly arrangement. You 
build a stairway up to a certain landing-place, 
and then you maintain this landing-place by de- 
stroying the very process which led to it, and the 
very basis on which it stands. If your faith can 
rest on such a contradiction, much more may my 
unbelief I justify, therefore, my denial of mir- 
acles, because they are im.possible, and because 
the interposition of God, which they assume, 
demands an argument which would destroy the 
very proof that there is a God. 

I have endeavored to state the argument fully 
and fairly. We should not attempt to maintain 
what cannot be defended against any and all 
attacks. 

Now, it is not a reply to this objection, to say 
that a miracle only brings in a higher order of 
Nature than we had known before, and thus the 
miracle-worker is only he, who, knowing the 
event which is going to take place, but of which 
others are ignorant, takes advantage of his supe- 
rior wisdom to secure an acknowledgment of 



MIRACLES. 139 

his superior power. But this would be no miracle. 
It would be no communication of God to the soul. 
Such a view would neither maintain the Christian 
revelation, nor answer the objection against its 
miraculous evidence. 

Let us meet the objection face to face, and 
look it in the eye. Stripped of its verbiage, it 
amounts to this, — a miracle is unreasonable, and 
therefore impossible. But what do we mean by 
reasonable and unreasonable ? What is this 
supreme potency, which determines so easily 
whether aught be possible or impossible ? The 
objector appeals to it most confidently ; and so 
do we, and so do all men. What does it mean ? 
Is it only a word without reality, and with which 
our thoughts cheat themselves ? But, then, how 
idle all appeals to it must be ! and how absurd 
this very objection becomes ! If the reasonable 
has no reality, the objector to miracles because 
of their unreasonableness has no reality in the 
very ground- work of his objection. 
. But supposing we admit that the reasonable 
is real, and confine its reality to what an individ- 
ual man perceives and judges. There is thus no 
universal standard of reason to which all our 
perceptions and judgments should conform ; but 
the reasonable is in a man's consciousness alone, 
and it is unmeaning to talk of it as elsewhere or 



140 MIRACLES. 

otherwise. But, if this be so, what folly to talk 
at all ! Why should a man ever say a word if 
there is no universal standard of reason according 
to which his words can be judged by another 
mind as truly as his own? And how does all 
argument, i. e. every attempt to make others 
think as we do, fall to the ground, if there is not 
above and beyond us a standard to which we 
feel that not only our judgments, but those of 
every man, should conform ! If the reasonable 
be only what I fancy to be so, I may not, indeed, 
ask the objector to miracles to relinquish his 
objections ; but just as little may he require me 
to admit their force. Each man thus stands 
upon a ground which he can neither maintain 
against another, nor be forced by another to 
abandon ; and all argument between men is vain, 
and all agreement among them hopeless. 

But if we suppose the reasonable is something 
real, and has also its reality in some nature of 
things outside and independent of the individual 
mind which perceives it, we should then have a 
standard by which we could measure our indi- 
vidual judgments, and which would enable us to 
argue with some possibility of agreement. In 
this view, the reasonable would mean the facts 
of Nature' just as we discover them. I thus go 
to Nature, and observe what is occurring there ; 



MIRACLES. 141 

and these occurrences give me all my knowl- 
edge. I know nothing about the supernatural: 
the word has no meaning to me ; but Nature is 
real, and Nature is reasonable ; and this is all the 
reality and all the reasonableness I can know. I 
find no miracles in Nature, but only an invariable 
order;, which makes the thought of a miracle 
absurd, and the occurrence of a miracle impossi- 
ble. 

Now this view, in which the unreasonable and 
the impossible mean only what is unnatural, 
deserves a close inspection, that we may see its 
exact quality, and to what results it leads us. If 
there be nothing reasonable but the facts of 
Nature, then, of course, nothing can be known 
beyond these facts ; and therefore, whether be- 
yond these, any thing be possible or impossible, 
we have no right to say. If the only reason for 
the order of Nature, as we find it, be, that we 
actually do thus find it, then we have no right 
to say that it could never be found otherwise, 
nor that we ourselves may not find it altogether 
different to-morrow from what we find it to-day. 
That a certain fact occurs is, in itself, no reason 
why it should occur again ; and, if it has oc- 
curred a thousand times, this alone gives not the 
slightest reason for its future repetition. If we 
know nothing about the causes of the fact ; if, as 



142 MIEACLES. 

the positive philosophy stoutly affirms, we only 
know the facts themselves, — then to affirm any 
thing save what we or competent witnesses have 
actually observed is a most unwarranted assump- 
tion, which, if it be good natural science, is good- 
for-nothing logic. We have no right to general- 
ize upon such grounds : all that we may do is to 
hold to the individual phenomena as we have ob- 
served them ; and, if there are no miracles among 
these, we can say so ; but to deny that miracles 
are found elsewhere with other phenomena is as 
idle as for the blind man to deny the existence 
of colors which he never saw, or the deaf man 
the harmony which he cannot hear. To talk 
about universal laws, and an order of Nature 
which requires this and requires that, is to re- 
nounce the prime postulate of the positive 
school ; and thus these natural philosophers, who 
enter so confidently upon their task of mowing 
down and clearing up the theological thistle-field, 
dexterously contrive to cut off their own legs with 
the first movement of their scythe. 

The fallacy of the objection might be illus- 
trated, if we could suppose an observer to become 
acquainted with the force of gravity before there 
is any light or heat for him to know. Such an 
observer might become very conversant with 
Nature as then existing: he might go through 



MIEACLES. 143 

the universe, and find one unvarying order bind- 
ing all things to their centre ; but he might not, 
therefore, say that any change of this order is 
impossible. The introduction of light is such a 
change. Light is the antithesis, ' the direct op- 
posite, of gravity ; but when the Spirit of God 
brooded over the waters, and God said, ''Let 
there be light," there was light. 

If we generalize at all about Nature, and de- 
duce any thing further than the facts which have 
been actually observed, it is because we recog- 
nize that there is something reasonable beneath 
the facts, which also reaches beyond them, and 
which, instead of being made by the facts, has 
itself determined how they shall be made. The 
objector to miracles begins his objection by deny- 
ing that there is any such reasonableness : but he 
is obliged to affirm it before he gets through; 
and thus his objection rests upon two grounds 
which flatly contradict each other. In other 
words, he denies a miracle because it is different 
from Nature; but he can only maintain that 
nothing different from Nature can be by affirm- 
ing a principle which is itself different from Na- 
ture. The objector is attempting to ride two 
horses, which are proceeding in opposite direc- 
tions, at the same time, — a feat of gymnastics 
not easy, certainly, for the performer, however 



144 MIEACLES. 

amazing to the lookers-on. His argument is 
the old fallacy of the undistributed middle in 
the syllogism. A principle which can form the 
basis of a universal affirmation, and by which 
alone one is justified in affirming what is possible 
and what impossible, is not only beyond and 
above Nature, and must control Nature, but is 
recognized as such even by him who denies the 
supernatural ; or else his denial has no more 
meaning, even to himself, than the chatter of a 
parrot or a monkey. ''We must philosophize," 
said Aristotle ; '' and if one says we must not 
philosophize, still, in saying thus, he doth phil- 
osophize, and must do so." We must have the 
supernatural ; and it is alike the mystery and 
majesty of the human soul that we cannot deny 
the supernatural except in terms which abso- 
lutely imply and af&rm it. 

We take our stand, therefore, on this position, 
and declare — what the very denial of it implies 
— that the reasonable is supernatural; and, on 
this ground, the objection to miracles we are 
now considering instantly disappears. It does 
not profess to have any force except as it denies 
the supernatural ; and, if this denial fail, the ob- 
jection fails at once. If there be a reasonable- 
ness which is supernatural, then there must be a 
supernatural Reason who has made Nature, and 



MIRACLES. 145 

who is not only its Author, but its Finisher as 
well, beginning it and consummating it out of 
his own fulness, and for his own glory. Could 
he make it ? and can he not control it ? And if 
it be the sublime truth that God hath ^'created 
all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now 
unto the principalities and powers in heavenly 
places might be known by the Church the mani- 
fold wisdom of God^ according to the eternal 
purpose which he proposed in Christ Jesus our 
Lord," then, what is io hinder such adjustments 
and interferences with the order of Nature as he 
may see fit to introduce for the full disclosure 
and accomplishment of the wondrous plan? 

'^To many minds," said Plato, ''there must 
come a moral improvement before they can re- 
ceive any intellectual enlightenment ; " and to 
the minds immersed in Nature, and who boast of 
their inability to look beyond it, how much need 
there is of a spiritual insight and quickening ! A 
man's intellect which has shut out the light of the 
supernatural is like a man's senses which have 
shut out the light of day. In either case, he walks 
in darkness. He speculates, perhaps; he inquires 
about the meaning of thiugs; he explores Na- 
ture ; he gives us his sciences, which he calls the 
only positive truth: but he is all the while like 
a blind man, who feels over with his fingers the 

13 



146 MIRACLES. 

form of a statue, or the face of a man, in order 
to discover thus the beauty and the living soul. 
Oh for the light ! Oh for the opened eye! What 
a difference would they work at once in all his 
inquiries and their results ! If the blind man 
could only see, how insignificant would all his 
discoveries by his fingers seem! And, if the in- 
tellect Avhich seeks to shut out the supernatural 
could only be illumined by its light, how mean- 
ingless and dead would be all its movements 
separate from this ! 

To a soul which has actually known Jesus 
Christ as the Saviour of sinners, and found him 
its light and hope of glory, and opened its eye 
to the lofty view which he reveals of man, of 
Nature, and of God, how meagre and unsatisfying 
seem all speculations which he has not illumined 
and inspired ! 

'' The entrance of Thy words giveth light; 

IT GIVETH UNDERSTANDING UNTO THE SIMPLE. My 
LIPS SHALL UTTER PRAISE WHEN ThOU HAST TAUGHT 

ME Thy statutes. The law of the Lord is per- 
fect, CONVERTING THE SOUL; THE TESTIMONY OF 

the Lord is sure, making wise the simple ; the 
statutes of the lord are right, rejoicing the 
heart ; the commandment of the lord is pure, 
enlightening tpie eyes." 



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